therning.org/ magnus

I’ve been listening to a few episodes of LugRadio and I’ve found them very enjoying so far. What I haven’t enjoyed so much though is my silly MP3 player. The episodes are recorded in variable bit rate (VBR) and my player is utterly pants with handling that–I can’t rely on the timer, I can’t see the total length of a track and I can’t fast forward. Add to this that the bloody thing doesn’t remember its position within a track and it’s obvious just how much pain it’s bringing me at the moment. In a relatively recent episode someone mentioned gnormalize to turn it into a constant bit rate (CBR) MP3. Just too bad that gnormalize isn’t available as a Debian package.

“Why have an entire program written for something that should be simple to do on the commandline using GStreamer?”

Well, here’s the command line that recodes an MP3 (no matter what bit rate it has) to an MP3 with a CBR of 96:

gst-launch-0.8 filesrc location=lugradio.mp3 ! mad \
! lame bitrate=96 ! filesink location=lugradio_cbr.mp3

Now using my player is slightly less painful

It’s been a bit too long in the making but now it’s here I just entered verion 0.8 of epilicious on GomeFiles. The APT package is available from my repo as well. Enjoy!

Well, this is the first entry in my st00pid category. I make quite a few mistakes when using Linux, mistakes that take time and effort to fix. From now on I’ll swallow my pride and write down, in a public place like this, about what st00pid things I do. Most importantly I’ll also write down what I did to get my Linux system back to the state it was before my brain temporarily popped out for a coffee.

I like keeping my Debian systems minimal. When running Sid there ends up being quite a few upgrades to download and when dependencies change your system ends up having “orphaned” packages, i.e. packages that were pulled in to satisfy a dependency but by now the dependent package has since moved on (or been deleted). This is of course a worrying thought, packages are installed that don’t actually need to be present on the system. My stomach’s turning. Some people use aptitude to handle this, personally I’ve never really like aptitude and I use debfoster.

Yesterday, after a sizable upgrade of my system at work I ran debfoster to prune orphaned packages. This was in fact the first time I ran it after setting up the system which resulted in quite a few questions regarding whether to keep specific packages or not. This is about the time when my brain popped out for a coffee. When asked if I wanted to keep lvm2 or not there was no brain to consult and I answered no. Had the brain been around it would have reminded me that I opted to use logical volumes on that particular machine (for two reasons, 1) I had never done it before and it’s damn cool, and 2) it makes the system a bit more flexible and future proof).

After a reboot I was sitting there with a system that was fairly useless since the root partition couldn’t be mounted. A quick calculation of just how long it’d take me to re-install later, I popped in the only live CD I had available at work–Ubuntu 5.04, Hoary Hedgehog. Using that I found a page on the Knoppix Wiki on how to use LVM2 with Knoppix. Now armed with something that looked like a workable plan I did the following in a terminal

$ sudo su -
# modprobe dm-mod
# vgscan
# vgchange -a y
# cd /mnt; mkdir debsys

Then I went ahead and mounted the root partition on /mnt/debsys. I also mounted the other partitions I have on my installed system, /var, etc. Then to get into it and fix it I

# chroot /debsys
# apt-get install lvm2 lvm-common

Except lvm2 refused to install, it complained about the kernel being too old. Not surprising since Hoary is getting really old by now. to get around that I downloaded the source for lvm2, modified debian/preinst so that the kernel version check was skipped, re-built the package, and installed it. Worked like a charm.

I complained earlier about VMWare Player not allowing me to replace my Windows boxen at work. It seems VMWare took my complaints seriously (yeah right), by releasing VMWare Server they’ve made my dream possible.

I have to admit that their releasing VMWare Server is surprising, and since it allows creation of new images it makes the limitation of VMWare Player rather strange. Well, I’m not complaining. I’ve finally been able to purge Windows from my desk. From today on all my Windows boxen will be VMWare images accessed from my Linux machine. Brilliant. Thank you VMWare!

I’ve just uploaded a Debian package that fixes Epilicious so that it works with Epiphany 2.14. It still works like a charm

Do keep in mind that I’m packaging an unreleased version of Epilicious.

The third part of hour trip was a short one, a one-day stop in Singapore. We checked in in-town at the train station in Hong Kong, a very convenient thing indeed, then took a train to the airport and boarded the Singapore Airlines plane to Singapore. The flight lasted 4 hours.

There is a world of difference between KLM and SIA. It’s in the small details and the extraordinary service. I can understand people who refuse to fly anything but SIA.

We arrived at our hotel after a short taxi ride. After a small mix-up with the room we got ready to hit the city. Xavier(X), Tris and Tim were in Singapore at the same time and we met up with X and Tim at the Raffles hotel for a few drinks. Tris was busy with her looks and didn’t arrive until a bit later.

They had made plans for dinner already so we split up. Dita and I walked to Chijmes and found a restaurant that served asian food. After dinner we walked to the river looking for a good bar to spend time waiting for X and parents to make another appearance. Apparently we managed to choose a dodgy bar, one that imports “entertainment girls” from Indonesia. How were we to know? We moved on to a bar with its own micro brewery.

All in all a wonderful day, despite the pressing heat and humidity, in Singapore. Amazingly cool to catch up with friends from Holland while travelling in South East Asia

Since we returned from our trip to Hong Kong, Singapore, and Jakarta on Thursday last week it’s high time I get around to writing something about it. Don’t you think? I’ve split it into three parts, one for Hong Kong (including this introduction), one for the brief stop in Singapore, and the last part covers our stay in Jakarta (and Bali).

We took off to Heathrow early, early in the morning. Parking went as smoothly as we hoped and before we knew it we were queueing for the security check. KLM, true to form, offered us absolutely terrible food on the first leg, London to Amsterdam. The food on the longer leg was much better. I’m just wondering why they insist on having different desserts for Halal meals and regular meals, what’s not Halal about chocolate cake?

Once off the plane in Hong Kong I began being amazed. Organised, clean, everything was working. Not really what I had expected. After a quick lunch we took a cab to Beauty Court on Robinson Road. Wow! Hong Kong was greener than I expected, and the streets were fascinating. Being built on the side of a mountain and being an amazingly crowded city they have some unique problems relating to traffic, and they’ve come up with interesting solutions. It was a long time since I had such an interesting taxi ride.

Our first whole day we spent on Lantau, visiting the monestary there and its large Buddha statue. Despite the rain it was a good day and the mist that came and went added to the experience. The vegetarian food offered in the restaurant in the monestary was delicious and very cheap.

One day we took a bus to Stanley with its rather famous market. I have to admit the market wasn’t as good as I expected. I’d recommend one of the markets in Kowloon instead, though Stanley offered some good vistas that’d be hard for Kowloon to match The most memorable thing in Stanley was the food we had in a small restaurant squeezed in between stalls in the market.

On the only sunny day of our stay in Hong Kong we went up to The Peak. The tram up was impressing, and just a little bit scary. On our hosts’ recommendation we took the bus down rather than the tram–you go down backwards in the tram. The view was as spectacular as expected and as a bonus the shopping centre up there was very reasonable. We had lunch at the Peak Lookout, a bit on the pricey side to say the least, but it’s a must I guess.

We went to Kowloon a few times. The Symphony Lights was fairly entertaining, personally I found the Avenue of The Stars more fun. I’m sure I would have enjoyed it even more if I had watched a few more Chinese movies. We also tried to get to the night market in Kowloon, but when we got there when they had just started setting it up. Being a bit tired and hungry we decided not to hang around. For lunch one day we went to the Penninsula for high tea. Absolutely brilliant and it delivered that “colonial feeling” I was hoping for We ended our stay in Hong Kong by going to the bar high up in the Penninsula, Felix. Designed by Philippe Stark it will leave an impression, whether you like his style or not. The view is gorgeous, visit it at night and Hong Kong will show its best side. Also have to mention that a visit to the loo is a must!

All through the stay we spent a lot of time with our hosts, Matisse, Beulah and Antony. It was great to meet Matisse for the first time and to catch up with her parents. We are very lucky to have friends like them!