TechnoClippings

I’ve been watching videos on my Treo for a couple years now but since recently upgrading to a Treo 650 (which has a nice fast processor and a gorgeous 320×320 screen) I’ve found it even more compelling to do so. Another factor is the increasing prevalence of video on the web: screencasts, movies, video podcasting… There’s a ton of content out there.

The best program for viewing videos on the Treo is the free TCPMP. It does an excellent job at smoothly handling many formats and is a lot more stable than MMplayer, my previous choice.

So… We have a device and a player. Now we need content and we usually need to convert it to a mobile format. There’s no use in putting a DVD quality AVI file on your PDA or phone if it has a small screen and when storage space is at a relative premium.

I won’t discuss where to get content, assuming you already have a number sources at your disposal from DVDs and other media you own and/or thanks to sites by google, yahoo, and a host of others where you can download content.

Once you have that content, here are the two programs that I’ve found extremely useful for preparing it for your mobile device are PQ DVD and SUPER:

• Pocket DVD Studio (or PQ DVD) is a low cost ($32) Windows tool that will take a DVD or video file (it supports .avi, .wmv, .mpg, and .rm among others) as input and re-encode it according to your specs. This allows you to pick the optimum resolution, bitrate, audio quality, etc. for you iPod, Pocket PC, Palm, or PSP. The software is very easy to use and quite powerful. The interface feels a little klunky but you get used to it and PQ DVD delivers good results
• SUPER won’t work with DVDs directly (though it apparently handles VOBs), nor can you pick segments of a file to re-encode as you can with PQ DVD. However it makes up for this in versatility. SUPER supports a ton of formats. I originally came across it because I was searching for a way to convert Flash videos (.flv files) into AVIs. Flash videos are popular these days because they’re basically a combo player and video in a single file, and are therefore nicely cross platform, thanks to Flash. They’re useless to me on my Palm though and SUPER does a great job at conversion. Oh yeah, did I mention it was free? :-)

One word of caution re: SUPER. I have no evidence to base this on but you might do well to install free software in a virtual environment so as to protect your host machine. SUPER runs fine for me in VMware and that way I know I don’t need to worry about spyware. Better safe than sorry.

Tags: video, encoding, treo, media player, flash, flv, tcpmp, codec, flash conversion, pqdvd, super

Thomas is a Tiger. That is, he’s in his first year of Cub Scouts and he and his friends are known as Tigers (go Pack 464!). This gets Thomas and I doing lots of interesting things: going on outtings, building cars, and… spending the night on an aircraft carrier!

The USS Hornet is a floating museum docked in Alameda, just south of Oakland and across the bay from San Francisco. As part of the Hornet’s “live aboard” program, Thomas and I spent about 20hours on the ship from Saturday afternoon to noon Sunday.

Neither Thomas nor I had been on a military ship before, let alone an aircraft carrier. The Hornet was built over 60 years ago and refitted multiple times since then. It served in WWII and picked up the Apollo 11 crew upon their return to earth. Saved from the scrap heap 10 or so years ago, it’s been renovated by a welcoming and dedicated group of people.

After orientation, setting up our bunks, muster, and chow, we spent the evening exploring the ship from top to bottom. Being able to roam around a floating city (3,500 crew members during WWII) was a lot fun. We got lost a few times but, as long as you know which way is up :-), it’s easy to find your back to the hangar deck.

The Hornet’s team is doing a great job at procuring and restoring navy aircraft, including many that once served on the aircraft carrier. Our favorite is the F8 Crusader. Looking down its air intake was truly like looking into the gaping maw of a great white shark. Indeed, we were told the story of a 260lbs man being sucked in from 10 feet away and literally pulverized. BTW the plane you see to the right took 1,000 hours to restore and is in beautiful condition.

By far the best part of our stay was the fact that ex-crew members of the Hornet and its sister ships were giving us tours and answering our questions. It made all the difference in the world and gave us a window in the lives of the crew. We learned a ton:

• Frank, who worked on the flight deck on the Hornet in the 50s explained, with the help of a model and cardboard planes, how the carrier managed its fleet of 90 aircraft.
• He also told us of the time he was burnt by jet thrust and being blown 400ft down the flight deck. Thomas was very impressed.
• The Hornet’s flight deck is made of teak (by far the most valuable part of the ship we were told!). Metal would make it too easy for sparks to fly and fuel to combust.
• Rich gave us a very detailed tour of the flight bridge and told us of his experiences working on deck: how planes were launched, how pilots lost their lives in the event of cold catapults (i.e. ones that didn’t propel their jets from 0 to 120mph in 2sec flat), and of pulling pilots out of burning aircraft wearing an asbestos suit.
• Michael (?) gave Thomas and I a private tour of the CIC (Combat Information Center) and turned on all the green and blue “mood lighting” for us. Very cool.

I could go on and on. Suffice it to say it was an incredible experience and Thomas already wants to go back. Many thanks to our hosts on the Hornet and esp. the former crew members. You made a tremendous and often very moving difference.

When flying, you usually expect to pay more for greater distance. Flying from San Francisco to Los Angeles is a lot cheaper than to Tokyo. However, it seems that there’s a point at which you pay more the closer you get…

I was on United’s site and, just for the hell of it, priced out a flight from Oakland airport to San Francisco. I believe the distance between the two to be roughly 12 miles as the crow, I mean the jet, flies.

Those are some very expensive miles, check it out:

The perceptive among you will have noticed that, although the title states “Oakland to San Francisco”, the trip details actually have us flying from SFO to Sacramento (yes, that would be a bug). This is much more reasonable, after all SMF is a whopping 80miles away!

And I bet they don’t even serve drinks :-)

Tags: oak, sfo, smf, united, flying

I needed an http proxy for another project (more on that later) and thought it would be fun to write one in ruby. How simple can it be? With a few compromises, it can be very short indeed:

# tinyproxy.rb
# just for the fun of it

require 'socket'
require 'http-access2'

def process_request(conn)
  verb, uri, protocol = conn.gets.split
  puts uri
  http = HTTPAccess2::Client.new()
  resp = http.get(uri)
  while HTTP::Status.redirect?(resp.status)
    puts "redirect"
    resp = http.get(resp.header['location'][0])
  end
  conn.puts resp.content
  conn.close
end

server = TCPServer.new('localhost', 4567)
while (conn = server.accept) do
  Thread.new(conn) do |c|
    process_request(c)
  end
end

I’m cheating in a couple places. I’m only handling GET requests, and I’m using Hiroshi Nakamura’s excellent http-access2 package.

On the other hand, it’s multi-threaded and it handles redirects, a must for the web.

Tags: ruby, http, httpproxy