John Mee - Some guy in Sydney

All of:

1) Kill the process “googleupdate.exe”
2) run “msconfig” and uncheck “GoogleUpdate” from the “StartUp” tab
3) SystemTools->Scheduled Tasks uncheck the “Enabled” box under the “Task” tab of “GoogleUpdateTaskUser”

Today’s evacuation notice in New Orleans was surprising in its force and conviction.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7590332.stm

Should be interesting to watch what happens this time.
I liked this little loop of the storm to date (I think this link is live data so it will date quickly)
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/gmex/loop-vis.html

Someone’s done a nice job on this one too. (also live I expect)
http://www.ibiseye.com/

Wasn’t the opening ceremony pretty?

Since getting a dual TV Tuner card I cannot believe how difficult it has been to find the right TV Tuner software.

• DVB-T (the rest-of-the-world uses this digital TV broadcast format. Not ATSC - the USA format)
• can cope with moving window from one monitor to another. I tend to focus always on one monitor and background tasks belong on the other; sometimes I want to watch TV, other times just keep an eye on it.
• can resize the window from one inch to full screen - again focus or background
• can record (a) in the background (b) consuming less than 50% CPU (c) in a non-proprietary codec
• can schedule a recording
• doesn’t take forever to change channels

I tried (Thank goodness for trial versions)

Mediaportal (0.2.3.0)

Good. Not twin tuner capable. Can’t switch between Full Screen and window

Nero Vision

Just a TV Ripper/Capture; not for watching with

Blaze DTV (3.5)

Very good! But cannot switch monitors.

Sesam TV Center

Might be good but first impressions were so cheap and cheesy I elected cut my losses and not to waste time on it

Beyond TV

Great! Excepting doesn’t do DVB-T, has no plans to, and that’s just too bad

Digital TV

Didn’t recognise the hardware

DNTV Live

Didn’t recognise the hardware

And also a few others I must have successfully managed to uninstall. Most really had just one thing going for them; but all of them gave me something critical to complain about.

PowerCinema 5 / PowerDirector 7

I settled on MediaPortal for a while. But then came along PowerCinema 5 which is similar but can actually handle both tuners - which means I can record on one and watch the other, or watch two channels at once (Picture In Picture), and it can handle all the other requirements. Well sort of. I thought it was really good, and it is - for watching. Sucks for capture and edit.

The Olympics is here and I’m a bit of a fan, but, like most of us, can’t stand all the fluff and commercials. So I’m recording all day and watching it the next picking out the bits of interest. Three problems have arisen;

1. the recordings are consuming 8GB/hour which with 12-18 hours of broadcasting is getting quite difficult to manage
2. The recordings use a proprietary audio format (AC3) when using the scheduler
3. It refuses to write the files anyplace but the C: drive

There is an option in PowerCinema to decide the quality of the recordings (Good/Better/Best) and for no obvious reason mine is locked on “Best”; which is great but I’d rather lower the quality than proceed with these huge files. So, no plan just straight thinking, was to schedule something on linux to downcode them to something more manageable. No dice. Wasted several hours bashing my head against a wall of “unknown codec” type issues. The reports said it was AC3 sound but whenever I forced it it just wouldn’t work. To top it off I couldn’t edit the files with anything other than Cyberlink PowerDirector. A perfectly useful program excepting that the export encodings turn out absolutely horrid large pixelated blurred messes, no matter how much I fiddle with the options, and worse still, the exports happen at snail-race speed and 90% CPU. So 2 hours viewing time requires 1 hour to export (despite the latest and greatest intel dual-core CPU) for a very nicely edited thank you, but -unwatchable- mess.

Anyway, to cut a long story shorter I discovered that, when timeshifting only, Cyberlink use their own proprietary format, although when NOT timeshifting it doesn’t. WTF?! Fine. I just won’t timeshift. Nope. Welcome to computers. If I don’t timeshift it won’t background. The whole point is not to have to watch the broadcast 24/7. So I’m now waaay back to square one.

Surely one of all these tuners will record to a lighter encoding? Well most of them aren’t working now (trials over) so I’m back to mediaportal (GPL). It dumps to “dvr-ms” which isn’t really helping.

Today I’m trying “Nero Vision” which is producing a “.mpg” in a variety of sizes (720i) and at vastly more manageable weight but, presumably because it is transcoding, runs one core at 100% (so 50% machine utilization). Now if I can just find something to chop these things up which doesn’t take forever to export, which should be easy right because I’m not asking it to re-encode, just slice, dice, and dump… yeah, easy, right? We’ll see. The editing software is primitive. Windows movie maker crashes when trying to read the captures. Linux apps don’t read them. The exports run at the same snail pace (1:1) even when I just want to chop the excess off the ends and write to the same format. I haven’t even bothered with PowerDirector because I expect it will generate rubbish and take forever to do it…. still hard to get good help these days.

I’m starting to form the opinion that software development teams are actually only as good as the least talented member of the team: the talent does not counterbalance the no talent - but forms a chain with strong and weak links. I am the weakest link. Good-bye.

Whilst pushing bytes around to free up some space I stumbled over some old photos I wasn’t all that excited about at the time. Perhaps not so bad afterall. I thought they might brighten up the place and give us a break from geeking…

Wattle in bloom

Letterbox view - Sunset in the mountains

The Three Sisters

Blue Mountains Panorama

A little curiousity I’ve found trying to put icons inside my headers. The order is significant (IE6/7 and FF2) such that to get the right effect I should put the images before the text. This is what I get if I do it ‘normally’…

img.tool {
	float: right;
	cursor: pointer;
	display: inline;
	margin: 0px 2px 2px 0px;
}

<h1 class="position">
	Human Resources Administrator
	<img class="tool" src="img/new.png">
	<img class="tool" src="img/copy.png">
	<img class="tool" src="img/edit.png">
</h1>

Try as I might I just could not get the margin/padding/whatever to budge. But if I switch the images to be before the text I get the right result. Don’t bother to wonder why. Just make a mental note and keep moving.

<h1 class="position">
	<img class="tool" src="img/new.png">
	<img class="tool" src="img/copy.png">
	<img class="tool" src="img/edit.png">
	Human Resources Administrator
</h1>

I’ve got a YUI tree which loads the leaves dynamically with Ajax calls. But I want to open up the tree to a specific leaf - on the third level down - after the page loads - as the server is delivering content specific to that node.

How to do? It’s like saving state after a roundtrip to the server. (the hierarchy is team->role->position)

The server tells the team node to expand which in turn tells the role node to unsubscribe and expand itself. In effect the tree opens to the third leaf.

during page load
   after drawing the tree with teams nodes
   get the specific team node
   subscribe to 'expandcomplete' with this function
          unsubscribe from the expansion event
          expand the specific role node
   now expand the team node

var teamnode = tree.getNodeByProperty("tmn_id","#getPosIds.tmn_id#");
tree.subscribe("expandComplete", function(node) {
	var rolenode = this.getNodeByProperty("pos_id","#getPosIds.pos_id#");
	tree.unsubscribe("expandComplete");
	rolenode.expand();
});
teamnode.expand();

Another suggested solution is to save state with a cookie, but i didn’t try that one.

I’ve gone a little Ajax crazy; every solution looks like ajax at the moment, and this is just with the YAHOO! library. I know there are others, potentially better ones out there (extjs.com?) but I’ve not evaluated them.

My brother has just started riding his bike to work… in San Francisco.

• The Sausalito Ferry carries about 40,000 passengers a month according to the Report of the General Manager

Sausalito Ferry Bike Room


• The Manly Ferry carries about 470,000 passengers a month I’m guessing from this fact sheet.

  The Manly Ferry Bike Rack
  

The mind boggles. Am I getting this right..?

TEN TIMES THE DEMAND!!

Compare those facilities again.
This is what you want… this what you get… this is what you want… this is what you get…

Now don’t tell that the Sydney CBD is so not-bicycle-friendly that there’s no point in taking it with you. That kind of thinking is exactly the problem. How far you can get from the Quay with a bicycle? An office near Town Hall, Surry Hills, Ultimo, or Pyrmont? Central Station for the Blue Mountains? Darlinghurst for fashion? Kings Cross for a night out? Newtown for freaks? Uni of Sydney or UNSW? Should I continue?

Everyone knows its faster to walk up George St in peak hour than sit on a bus. Mmm… bike?

Are you dreaming of a day when an old lady can roll down to the ferry, sit admiring the harbour with her knitting, then perhaps cruise the botanic gardens, or power up to Newtown for tea with her good friend Betty? I know I am

A flick through minutes of the Ferry Passengers Advisory Committee it looks like they actively encourage people to ride to the ferry. Sydney Ferries are more likely discourage it simply because they can’t cope with the demand?! Can I roll my eye’s now please?

Thanks Andrew for the photo as I don’t actually take the ferry with my bike. I can ride there in about the same time and earn some chocolate. I agree its not nearly as peaceful; but I do like chocolate.

I’m trying to do some ajax with Coldfusion 7.
Anything returned from a call to a CFC method gets wrapped in a wddxPacket

<wddxPacket version=’1.0′><header/><data><string>This is the return value>/string></data></wddxPacket></code>

There is no way to avoid it. What were they thinking?!

The solution is simply not to use a CFC… instead write a standard coldfusion which parses the url for your method name and returns the data you want. Don’t forget to astudiously go around squashing all the whitespace CF likes to generate. And put special traps into your application.cfc to omit any standard headers/footers. And…

The one thing consistent about CF has always been the complete absence of foresight.

Here’s my dirty workaround: “ajax.cfm”
See the comments for a much improved version!

<cfparam name="method">

<cftry>
	<cfoutput>#evaluate(method & "()")#</cfoutput>
	<cfcatch></cfcatch>
</cftry>

<cffunction name="hello"><cfsilent>
	<cfscript>
		return "hollow ddorld";
	</cfscript>
</cfsilent></cffunction>

Walking down Manly corso - “Hey mate, can you tell me how far it is to Melbourne?”
Never one for a straight answer - “Well probably a bit far to walk”.

We get to talking. He not looking for directions for Melbourne as much as directions for life:

James is touristing the world for a month. He’s not drunk, not mental, not miserable, quite normal. His wife has recently left him. He is escaping a cocaine addiction. But he, just today, on the beach of Manly, has come to the conclusion that he is hopelessly miserable. He’s tried booze, drug, prostitutes. Nothing fulfills him. He needs a change. A life saving change. He’s negative. He’s 38, and he doesn’t want to die; well, not just yet. But he knows that is the path he is on: more drugs, more bad health, more misery, death.

We chat. He needs to turn his life around. He wants to turn his life around. He wants to think positive. His eyes brighten as we envisage positives. He gains hope. He wants life. Invite Jesus into his life. I encourage him to research the man: did he really exist? who did he say he was? who do you think he was?

Nothing is a coincidence. Thanks God for my little part in your play of James’ life. Fill and strengthen him with your spirit. See that he joins with us in your heaven.

Quick note to self and others having just wasted several hours trying to get Yahoo’s YUI calendar to work with dates in the format “2008-06-19″.

Working from this example I was only setting the “DATE_FIELD_DELIMITER”. It refused to work, but I struggled on confident that, for once, the americans really had implemented something which wasn’t culturally imperialistic.

Finally I’ve worked out that the “DATE_RANGE_DELIMITER” is already “-” and setting the “DATE_FIELD_DELIMITER” will not override that setting. It will continue parse your date as a range.

eg: So to use dates in yyyy-m-d format change the “DATE_RANGE_DELIMITER” to something else…

var call = new YAHOO.widget.Calendar("calendar");
call.cfg.setProperty("DATE_RANGE_DELIMITER", "+");
call.cfg.setProperty("DATE_FIELD_DELIMITER", "-");
call.cfg.setProperty("MDY_YEAR_POSITION", 1);
call.cfg.setProperty("MDY_MONTH_POSITION", 2);
call.cfg.setProperty("MDY_DAY_POSITION", 3);
call.select("2008-6-21");
call.render();


If you expect it to open at the selected day then don’t run away, there’s more…

The “pagedate” property only wants the month and the year; it can’t handle being fed the date you’ve just used, which is rather irritating. It not only wants you to trim the day off but also tell it the order of month/day strings (as opposed to month/day/year strings). It all starts to add up to lots of code…


call.cfg.setProperty("MY_YEAR_POSITION", 1);
call.cfg.setProperty("MY_MONTH_POSITION", 2);
call.cfg.setProperty("pagedate","2008-06");