Kooky returns - slightly overestimated

We went to see Kooky in the cinema yesterday and, to be honest, I expected more.
There weren't many things that I haven't already seen in the trailer. Also too much time is spent on car chases, I'd prefer to explore the facinating world of the "little gods" instead. And the last 10 minutes of the movie should've been cut off without mercy.
Last but not least, Jan Svěrak shouldn't really make the movie as family business. The kid is played by his son is so expressionless and von Hergot is inconvincibly narrated by his father. ...

kohovolit.eu

Today is the election day here in the Czech Republic. Before giving your vote, do not only consider the promises, but check how the parties represented your own interests in the past!
At kohovolit.eu you can try voting for a set of laws and the site will then show you which of the parties matches you the best - based on real voting in the parliament.

Korona 4.4.3

Korona is the live DVD combining KDE4 and OpenSolaris. I just uploaded the latest Korona 4.4.3 (with, eh, KDE 4.4.3) to genunix.org, it should appear there in a couple of hours.
Thanks to hnhn, the process list and other system info now work in ksysguard (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200646)
Also, Korona is booting directly into a KDE session again.

When running the iso inside VirtualBox, I was observing high CPU utilization by the kernel, this is likely related to bug 12799; it runs ok on real hardware.

Also konqueror crashes on startup, which is weird as noone of those running KDE 4.4.3 from the bionicmutton repository has reported that.

Last note - the bionicmutton.org site (hosting the kde-solaris packages and mercurial repository) is down due to some severe hardware failures, please be patient.

The hell's getting colder

After all those years when pkg, the OpenSolaris packaging system, was solely network-oriented, the on-disk format is coming.

For those uninitiated to OpenSolaris intricacies - so far, when someone creates software for OpenSolaris and wants to distribute it, he has to either run his own install server (!) or provide the package in the legacy SVR4 format.

Would you like your software to be mirrored by other people? Good luck trying to convince them to run the pkg server. 

Same goes for people running OpenSolaris in their internal networks - you want to update them but don't have access to the Internet? Run your own server! It takes several months to have a new network service approved? Bad luck, man ...

All this is soon to become the ugly but distant past. Check out the ON-DISK FORMAT PROPOSAL

God bye, Česká Spořitelna!

I just created an account in mBank. I'll be transferring our regular payments from Česká Spořitelna over the course of the next few weeks. The goal is to save around 1000 CZK (40 €) annually on fees and give the stagnant banking market in the Czech Republic yet another impulse towards competitiveness.

I'll have to keep the Česká Spořitelna account for some time, it's part of the mortgage deal, but reducing it as much as possible cannot hurt.

Community compost & Extreme parkour freerun chalenge ve Skate parku v Říčanech

Today was the Open Day of the new elementary school in Říčany (extremely bad web design btw, let's hope they improve it). We spent there about two hours, exploring the classrooms, watching the dancers and jumping in the Bouncy castle. It's a shame the school is about 30 minutes walk from our home, a bit too much for a first-grader IMO. But let's not make quick conclusions and wait for the first users' rating. After all, fresh teachers can make a big difference.


Then we headed north-west to see some of the Extreme parkour freerun chalenge. On the way there we discovered a community compost hidden in the shrubs near a playground, serving the nearby block of flats:

Note the labels with detailed instructions. Cool!

I liked the parkour stuff. It looked like the kids were organizing a big part of it themselves and it went quite smoothly.

There's a lot of kids doing parkour/freerun in our surroundings (or they are easier to spot :-) and it seems Mik likes it as well :-)

The ramp in the Skate park has been closed for some time due to some noise complaints by the neighbours. I'm not sure if the neigbours are happier with the anti-noise walls now ...

What is the motherboard model? In Solaris ...

So that I don't forget:

to find out the motherboard model in Solaris, use the

smbios

command.

# smbios
... 
ID    SIZE TYPE
2     59   SMB_TYPE_BASEBOARD (base board)

  Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
  Product: P4C800                    
  Version: Rev 1.xx                  
  Serial Number: MB-1234567890 
...

A bad surprise

This was really an unpleasant surprise for the little swallow who started to build it's nest on our balcony. We let them have it the last year but the rubbish was too much to let them repeat it.
Sorry little fellow, please find another place.

Download Youtube(and other) videos and batch convert them to mp3

This is a quick article on how to download videos from youtube (or any other supported site) and batch convert them into mp3 files.

First, how do you get the videos downloaded from youtube? I use the software from http://www.downloadhelper.net/   . It is a Firefox plug in.  Unfortunately, I have not found a Chrome equal.  SO I used Firefox for this task.

Using Download Helper, you just select download from its toolbar when you find your desired video.  You can select between flv and m4p file types.  I choose flv as personal preference.

Now the real reason for writing this, step 2: converting the video to a mp3.  I spent a portion of today trying out freeware that is supposed to do this easy task.  It all pretty much angered me.  Let me tell you what I tried so you don't go down the same path:

Freez FLV to MP3 - Not Free, can use once before getting a registration prompt. If you don't register, the program closes.  It also wouldn't batch encode more than 30 items.
FLV2MP3.org - It kept giving me 0 byte mp3 files.
A file from richapps.de: It wasn't a batch converter.

The program I ended up using, was VideoLan player.  It is an absolute favorite program of mine. There is no batch conversion feature of VideoLan.  However, a quick and dirty BAT file will do the trick.  I found the following code on the videolan help wiki and changed it for flv files.

Create your BAT file (How to create a bat file) in the top most directory where you downloaded your FLV files.  I plan to use this frequently so I called mine vlanFLV2mp3.BAT. It will convert all the files in that directory and in all the sub-directories below it. For instance, if you downloaded the flv files into C:\Documents and Settings\MYPC\Desktop\FLV and then have sub-directories of musical artists, you would want the BAT file in that top ..\Desktop\FLV directory.


Here is the code you need to past into the BAT file:

@ECHO OFF
REM ########################################################################
REM # A Windows XP cmd.com script to batch convert flv files to mp3. #
REM # #
REM # Copyright (C) 2008 Andrew Boden #
REM # (boden@graduate.uwa.edu.au) #
REM # #
REM # This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify #
REM # it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by #
REM # the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or #
REM # (at your option) any later version. #
REM # #
REM # This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, #
REM # but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of #
REM # MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the #
REM # GNU General Public License for more details. #
REM # #
REM # You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License #
REM # along with this program. If not, see .#
REM # #
REM # Version 1.0 (June 27th 2008) #
REM # Uses VideoLAN VLC 0.8.6h (www.videolan.org) #
REM # Gracefully handles commas and apostrophes in file names. #
REM # Not aware of any other characters needing graceful handling. #
REM # 512kbps encoding with 44100 sampling. #
REM ########################################################################

@ECHO OFF
FOR /R %%G IN (*.flv) DO (CALL :SUB_VLC "%%G")
FOR /R %%G IN (*.flv.mp*) DO (CALL :SUB_RENAME "%%G")
GOTO :eof

:SUB_VLC
SET _firstbit=%1
SET _qt="
CALL SET _newnm=%%_firstbit:%_qt%=%%
SET _commanm=%_newnm:,=_COMMA_%
REM echo %_commanm%
CALL "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc" -I dummy -vvv %1 --sout=#transcode{acodec="mp3",ab="512","channels=2"}:standard{access="file",mux="raw",dst="%_commanm%.mp3"} vlc://quit
GOTO :eof

:SUB_RENAME
SET _origfnm=%1
SET _endbit=%_origfnm:*.flv=%
CALL SET _newfilenm=%%_origfnm:.flv%_endbit%=.mp3%%
SET _newfilenm=%_newfilenm:_COMMA_=,%
COPY %1 %_newfilenm%
DEL %1
GOTO :eof

:eof


This is the original code, it might be easier to copy.  Remember to change m4a to flv if using the linked code.


If you already have all of the software, it isan easy 2 step process. 1: download all the videos you want. 2: run the bat file.

Beer explosion

How long does it take for a can of beer in a freezer to explode?
According to my unintentional experiment it's about 10 hours.
The blast was strong enough to open the fridge door and it broke a part of the transparent lid.