Aleksey Sudakov

On MacBooks and yonah

2006-06-21T14:33:00-05:00:00

Yonah is definitely here and at bellow $750. Compaq V5000T 1.66 Duo 15.1' 40GB DVD/CDRW $675 after ($250 in rebates) might or might not have IEEE on the Left side - check. For that matter HP dv1000t 1.83 Duo 14' 80GB $895 after ($150 rebate and free upgrades) or $999 with 2.0 GHz Duo but the same Intel PRO/wireless 3945ABG and similar no Giggy or remote which is useless but cost $15 extra. Compaq configured the same as HP would come to $890, but HP has more options and rebate is only $150 vs $250.

It is +$125 to go from 1.66 to 1.83MHz and +$150 to go to either 2.0 or 2.16 on Compaqs but only +$50 and +$75 on HPs and overall HPs are more solid and have more options, alas 14" screen. So where does it leave Apple with Mini 1.66G Duo 512M 60G Superdrive at $799 or MacBook with 1.83G Duo 13.1" 512M 60G no Superdrive at $1099 or MacBook with 2.0G Duo 13.1" 512M 60G plus Superdrive at $1299 ($200 for 2.0G and superdrive) (black is not worth it for $200 extra is for going from 60G to 80G - $200)? Clearly, without $100 rebate on Mini they are no longer interesting and become obsolete in less then 1/2 year. As for Notebooks HP and the rest are beating Apple on price too by $200-$300 or 20%-50%. So the only reason to buy Apple is still software and the only piece of Software that I am missing is FinalCut Pro, but it is not inclunded (only iLife'06 is), so... test how good iMovie and new FinalCut is and give up on Apple hardware.

Anyhow when buying new notebook look for FireWire and hopefuly non Intel PRO/wireless (doesn't work with OSX86)... Otherwise, do not understand why OSX86 didn't install on Toshiba - try 10.4.3. On D600, do not upgrade from 10.4.5 and do not expect more then what is working already - simply try iMovie and FinalCut Pro - give Apple another chance, but without either one of those there would be no reason to run OSX86 apart from coolness factor and pay for overpriced hardware

When buying Desktop... Is it really worth spending $300 on yonah desktop when yonah notebooks rapidly approaching $600 mark? Anyhow, when buying Desktop for parts to build Media Center System look for 800MHz bus (667MHz the very least as on Apple), non-LGA775 socket, double layer DVDRW and FireWire. Most $300 Desktops are LGA775 (all Pentium 4 HT and Celerons numbers not ending on 0).

Hacking J2ME and google maps

2006-05-18T15:00:00-05:00:00

Google maps tiles are PNG and about 15K. Both phones do not support PNG and JPG would be 19K-10K depending on compression. At street level resolution (zoom=2 gives street names, zoom=4 only avenues but covers most of Ile-de-Montreal in 3x3) 10x10=100 tiles would cover area from Papineu/Henri Boussa to Decarie/Park Kent and would take ~ 1.5M. So with less then 2-4M in storage, viewing SVG maps on the phone is not gonna work.

It doesn't work in smallest set-up - 2x2 tiles (~300K) on SE T610 218K of memory or pathetic Java runtime - Application Error, thought 400+K jar installs up fine. i-415 doesn't like to install jars larger then 400K and doesn't support PNG. The following table summarize my phones:

Phone	Java	Space	Heap	Canvas
SE T610	MIDP 1.0/no jad	2M	218K	128x127	Bluetooth, IR
i-415	MIDP 2.0/no PNG	4M?	1.0M	130x114	nothing
LG F9100	MIDP 2.0/no PNG	24M?	775K	128x144	nothing

On another note, SE doesn't support jad, so no multiple maps selection unless I use RMS, but since T610 doesn't load even 2x2, then what is the point? Continue hacking i-415 and buy LG F9100.

Adult

2006-04-27T10:58:00-05:00:00

Quebec

History

Misc

Voyage

Des films de Quebec

L'eau

Kids DVDs

2006-04-27T10:33:00-05:00:00

Mac vs. Windows... again and again...

2006-04-03T13:09:00-05:00:00

After reading how FrontRow is a crap I ended up playing with Windows XP Media Center Edition only to learn that is crappy too. Namely, per official Microsoft Extender FAQ the whole MediaCenter - Extender architecture is as good as its extenders and extenders are closed source. So I do get decent experience on a PC, but in the living room Xbox extender is pretty much useless for anything but playing mp3. The reason for that is that Microsoft do not support any codecs but Microsoft's and there is no way (and there will be no way) to install 3rd party codecs/software on the extender, be it Xbox or Xbox360. One could install ASP and AVC codecs on MCE PC, but when it comes to playing the stuff thru extender, well even WMV7/8/9 .asfs and .wmvs could not be played of MCE PC which is bizzare because same .asfs and .wmvs could be streamed over http (The easiest way to test it is to create an .asx with a refference to actual material).

So Windows XP Media Center Edition is for PC and PCs are PCs - noisy, don't have remote, etc and generally are built to do what PCs are built to do, unless of cause, they are Mac Mini. But wait a second, Mac Mini runs Windows these days and does MCE too (well, they picture iMac and not exactly MacMini, but still it works on Mini too). So after all, regardless of FrontRow and Freevo fiasco, MacMini could still make it to my living room as next generation Media Center (h264 720p and beyond), this time around though, it would most likely run MCE.

There are just couple things now that stop me from buying MacMini right-away

No XP drivers for native IR-receiver
Making sure that either remote from Xbox extender will work with IR-receiver, or MacMini remote could be used to some extent to control MCE.
DVI TV or at least DVI to S-video (or VGA to S-Video) converter available at Amazon and CompUSA for the same $19.99.

So what would happen first - they hack IR driver for XP or Yohan Wintel boxes drop in price bellow $500 making Minis too expensive? For now Amazon still runs $25 mail in rebate, this time till end of May.

Unlike FrontRow, Media Center on MCE is quite extendable. In fact there is an Media Center SDK, so the first thing to do once I am done playing with Media Center plug-ins and TVTonic is to write my own that would play my RSS feeds similar to TVTonic but from my media center server.

.smil .mov .qtl

2006-03-08T12:41:00-06:00:00

Looks like neither mplayer nor xine could play .smil playlist. Apple way of converting .smil to .mov by adding SMILtext and saving as .mov is a hack. And .qtl could be used to playout supported content in full screen despite Apples efforts to collect money for the priviledge.

Messing with QuickTime

2006-03-08T11:30:00-06:00:00

So far Apple kept their Podcast Chapter Tool private and only available of OSX. Trying to hack it out have been unsuccessful so far. My guess is that is because editing .mp4 is supported in QT 7.x and QuickTime for Java is QT 6.x.

Anyhow, the easiest way to edit .mov (and .mp4?) is using quicktime.std.movies of QuickTime for Java. Here are examples Part 1 and Part 2 or this. Still, not very clear how to create .mov refferencing external movies? Is it as simple as creating Movie and saving it without flattening first? To test use QTatomizer.

Finally, here is a wiki of A/V quirks on OSX

Mac Mini is on Amazon

2006-03-08T10:27:00-06:00:00

Amazon started selling Intel based Mac Mini. Mac Mini 1.5GHz Solo is at $599.99 and Mac Mini 1.66GHz Duo is at $799.99 or both are at MSRP. Amazon runs $25 mail in rebate on both until 03/21/06.

Mac Mini review by arstechnica pointed out that MacMini CPU is socketed and thus MacMinis are upgradable, but at least for now it is quite expensive $300 to go to Core Duo 1.83GHz and $400+ for Core Duo 2GHz. Still, it makes MacMini very cheap Yonah entry-level box that could have longer life with CPU upgrades. Same review pointed out that Mac Mini Solo is OK for HD at 780p but is not good enough for 1080p. Yeah, drivers are not fully optimized yet, but still big question is... even with optimized drivers and 1GB of RAM would Core Duo playout 1080p acceptably? Not that there is much of 1080p content today, just a hint that in couple years these Mac Minis would be outdated both because they lack HD-DVD drive and CPU is not fast enough.

This review points out that even installed by Apple Front Row is still a crap. Moreover, the whole idea of streaming video from a server running iTunes is questionable. Why not just mount server filesystem and read the file?

So overall, looks like at least till MacOS version 10.4.7-10.5.x and/or FrontRow version 1.5+ Mac Mini is useless for my purposes.

Mac Mini

2006-03-01T10:43:00-06:00:00

So Apple released Intel based MacMini with their stinky old remote. At $799 Core Duo version is competative with lower end Pentium D boxes starting at $700+, alas Gateways and such offer more raw power and disk space (2.8GHz, 2x1MB L2, 800 MHz, 1GB RAM, 250GB HD vs. 1.66GHz, 2x1MB L2, 667MHz, 512 MB RAM, 80GB HD), but lack extras like 1G ethernet, bluetooth and built in wireless. Oh did I forgot remote? Anyhow, looks like for the first time ever Apple appears if not cheap, but at least as a good entry level Dual Core system.

Now, it doesn't run Windows yet, but it will and when it would or Amazon would run $100 or so rebate on it, it would be a Buy with capital "B".

Apple Remote is Infrared and not very easy to get to, so no ASCII key codes yet and thus Apple Remote would be useless for controlling freevo. That means that on Mac the media center application is and will be Front Row and there is no easy way around it. It is not a big issue, just I need to figure out a way to live within restrictions imposed by Apple thus at the end the hack would be cleaner. One way of getting my media into a FrontRow is to package it into RSS and subscribe to that RSS in iTunes. Another way is to use Bonjour to publish media on a server - the media could be both local files, as well as QT wrapper for remote file. The later is longer shot and the first thing I need to find out is... how to play WMV in Quicktime and/or iTunes.

So go ahead and play with FrontRow on Dell.

P.S. Here is a list of available remotes courtesy of www.centerstageproject.com

Mac Prius

2006-03-01T12:26:00-06:00:00

First, there was xbox in Rover running Linux and freevo. Then there was Jeepintosh. And now there is Mac Prius.... well, almost.

On a Prius note... Prius is not only 50mpg car but also a portable electricity generator and UPS.

Cheapest prepaid cellular

2006-02-13T14:37:00-06:00:00

Provider	$/min	Reload	Loose number	Notes
Beyondwireless GSM	$0.17/min $15/114m=$0.13	60 (15-90)days	30 days	just $10 to start
Boostmobile	$0.2-$0.1/min	90 days		comes with $10
T-Mobile to go	$0.2-<$0.1/min	30 or 90 or 365	90 days	ebay 150min($30 SIM) for $10 = $0.07/min

Google moving map

2006-02-08T13:56:00-06:00:00

convert lat/lon to UTM
subtract map's top UTM coordinates from converted lat/lon and divide by zoom
center map at x,y

or even simplier

subtract map's top lat/lon from current fix (a, b)
y = a*256/0.07294 for scale 5
x = b*256/0.08789 for scale 5

and see how bad is error on x.

Sertainly, neither did work. The first didn't work because google maps are not in UTM (Here in comments there is some info on what it is). The second didn't work because it is stupid.

Anyhow, here they say how to do it right.

Finally, all formulas could be found in Aviation Formulary and Great Circle Distance and UTM Wikipedia.

Google maps

2006-02-03T10:16:00-06:00:00

Google maps cannot be embeded into blogs because blogs do not allow JavaScript. The solution is to write "map renderer" progy to render an image and link the image to exernal page that would display the map. There is a problem with writing a progy - google maps has key assosiated with website that would host them (reffer in HTTP request), thus probably wouldn't work from local file on client computer. Simpliest work around is to write a .jsp to embed whatever is sent to it in a request and use a key for the host of .jsp. Anyhow my keys so far

ABQIAAAAQxYDSvhQ3H9O88u5_z5g3hRBwjByG4Rp6r-UxbB1xeqy8vuaDRThVB_PDNR9ejQ4NM8CcXRFw8-2pw for http://www.geocities.com/mockba80/
ABQIAAAAQxYDSvhQ3H9O88u5_z5g3hTzmWL5DYLvUtPlCn_wv2M_BZ3xvxSSgO2jxD31aohjxVvVt9fodfPv1A for http://mockba80.livejournal.com/

TODO:

Monitor mapki.com Knowledge_Base for goodies
Best map builder so far is http://www.mapbuilder.net but they use some custom code, so...
Second best is http://www.donkeymagic.co.uk/googlemap/
Lat/Lon to tile
Here is a tracer builder http://maptracer.50webs.com/tracer.htm
Once i415 arrives test www.mgmaps.com after www.mologogo.com
Learn how to feed NMEA 0183 data over the serial cable for your laptop's mapping softwar. Finally, geocoder.us use "http://geocoder.us/demo.cgi?address=" URL and Longitude goes first into Google maps and Lattitude second

Ipods

2005-12-21T08:25:00-06:00:00

Apple iPod mini Blue 4GB MP3 Player + Car Kit +Armband $225.00

APPLE IPOD 20GB 4TH GENERATION 5,000 SONGS! $167.98

APPLE IPOD 20GB 4TH GENERATION 5,000 SONGS! $140.61

Apple iPod Fourth Generation 20 Gig with iTrip Neoprene $177.50

APPLE IPOD NANO BLACK 2GB MP3 PLAYER BONUS CAR CHARGER $157.50

APPLE IPOD 40GB HARD DRIVE FROM 4TH GENERATION $95.60

APPLE IPOD 20GB HARD DRIVE FROM 4TH GENERATION $67.00

iTrip by Griffin Technology for Apple iPod FM transmit $15.50

Transcoding on Linux still suck

2005-12-09T13:47:00-06:00:00

Transcoding on Linux still suck. The options are pretty much limited to ffmpeg, mencoder and transcode. Underneath it all boils down to libavcodec and all three are no more then different command line frontends. Surprisingly all are quite slow. But first thing first...

MPEG-2

According to this TMpgEnc beats both transcode backends (ffmpeg and mpeg2enc) head out. I observed the same

Encode	FPS	VSIM	PSNR	Notes
TMpgEnc 2-pass VRB (D600 1.6GH)	5.33	61.98	32.00	Could double the speed with single pass with similar results
mpeg2enc (P4 2.66GH)	4.57	63.03	34.15	Results are way better with instructions from the bottom on this page
ffmpeg-9800 kbps (P4 2.66GH	8.2	65.52	34.37	1st frame is horrible despite 9800kbps

The first surprise uncovered with MPEGanalizzatore was that instead of IPBBPBBPBBPBB GOP, Linux tools produced no B-frames. This could be fixed controlling GOP size and number of B-frames as described here

Bigger surprise thought was that transcode was slow on Linux despite faster CPU (1.6*1.5=2.4 vs. 2.66). Moreover, on Windows mencoder clocked 29 fps, but PSNR was 10.75 and VSIM 7.15 and GOP size was 250 frames without B frames. This could be further investigated and probably tunned with some freak command line paramenters like this

mencoder -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd -nosound -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:keyint=18:vbitrate=6000:aspect=4/3 -o test.mpeg input.avi

But there is no point, since mencoder crash on both Windows and Linux (mencoder needs to be recompiled with libdv and up-to-date libavcodec) and Windows tools for MPEG-2 appears to be faster and result in better quality.

MPEG-4

FFMPEG/libavcodec could now output .mp4 and as a result all frontends should be able to produce .mp4 in one pass. But is it worth to mess with command line paramenters that are different from one tool to another, when on Windows with x264 the encoding is as easy as

"C:\Program Files\x264\x264.exe" --pass 1 --bitrate 1000 --stats ".stats" --bframes 2 --subme 1 --analyse none --me dia --progress --output NUL "N:\assets\03590578.avs" 
"C:\Program Files\x264\x264.exe" --pass 2 --bitrate 1000 --stats ".stats" --bframes 2 --subme 6 --b-rdo --analyse p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,p4x4 --progress --output 1000-QT.mp4 "N:\assets\03590578.avs"