Adventures in the land of the penguins

Well my four month old Thinkpad T41 developed a graphics problem and died. Sadly it took the data stored on the hdd with it. That'll teach me to run regular backups....With the replacement laptop I decided to install Ubuntu 10.10 as a dual boot with the current Windows XP Pro installation.

Read more...

I wrote recently about my problems with ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) wireless suddenly going flaky and how I solved it. I found that both the standard gnome network-manager and wicd had similar problems - a long delay before getting a wireless connection - it took almost half an hour once, with an average of 15 minutes random fiddling and warm and cold restarts to get a connection - note that the connection once made never dropped it just took an age to connect.

A few days on from my last post the wireless connection is still perfect, wicd connects in the background and it's very stable. To test my theory that the last files I removed solved the problem I have reinstalled Opera 10.62, no problems connecting (Opera browser plugin errors still reported in the bootlogs).

To double check the problem was caused by libnm-glib2 I reinstalled empathy (a messaging application which uses the shared network framework file libnm-glib2. Synaptic installed four packages altogether empathy, libnm-glib2, nautilus-sendto-empathy and a new one libnm-util1. On warm reboot the connection was still good after a couple of restarts, it connected invisibly and without any delay. However the next morning a cold reboot revealed that the wireless connection problem was back and wicd reported the error message 'bad password'.

I went back to Synaptic and marked empathy along with libnm-glib2 for complete removal and rebooted, wireless connection returned. Note that without complete removal wireless was not possible.

So this confirmed the solution, at least for me.

I was asked to set up a friend's new laptop recently. Normally this is straightforward, a couple of hours work and it's done. This time it wasn't and I want to use this as an example why you should use open file formats and avoid closed systems like MS Windows and MS Office or pay the price.

The old laptop was an XP machine, the new one Windows 7. The old laptop had died, so I could not use the MS Easy Transfer software to move everything over. Luckily the hard drive was OK so I hooked this up to HDD/USB device I use and transferred the data in a few minutes.

The problem came when I tried to transfer email messages from one to the other - I installed Windows Live Mail on the Windows 7 (W7) machine, and copied the mail folder from the old PC over - (it was an Outlook .pst file in which all mail and contacts are stored in one file).

Now few programs I know can import mail directly from a .pst except Outlook and Outlook Express and sometimes Windows (Live) Mail. But these are MS programs and they had worked together nicely in the past. Normally all you do is install the new email client say Outlook Express, Windows (Live) Mail, import the mail and it's done but sometimes you have to pass the mail through one to get it in a format another will recognise.

I planned to import mail into Windows Live Mail (WML) direct from the .pst file. But oh no, it's never that easy because unfortunately you cannot do that with WML, Outlook Express and other too, because to do this you need to have Outlook installed too. Yes really. Bizarrely Outlook provides the (dis)functionality to allow mail import into several free email clients - Outlook Express, Windows (Live) Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird/Seamonkey and probably more.


I didn't have Outlook installed on the new PC so there was problem, and it gets worse - Because I tried to use my own PC where I open it in Outlook 2000, export or import into Outlook Express (OE) or WML I thought. But no blocked again: MS helpfully changed the .pst file format to unicode in 2002 (to increase native storage capacity over 2Gb apparently). So the file I had was the newer version from 2003 and Outlook 2000 didn't recognise it. Darn.

OK I thought maybe I'll just copy it into the Outlook folder, rename my own outlook .pst for now so that it will look like the right one, in the right place. That didn't work either, so it seems the location and the format of the file is irrelevant and it's important that the file has to be tied deep into the installed version of Outlook for the import process to work .

I decided to bite the bullet and install a trial version of Office 2010 to sort this out – and it nearly did – except that I could find how to export the file as a backup when WML and OE didn't recognise it as an import source, but least I was able to tidy the file structure a bit – too many sub folders in a mail file often messes up mail imports, so it's usually best to have no sub folders at all when you try this.

Side issue: Unfortunately the uninstall did not restore Outlook 2000 as the mail client, it removed some vital reference to Mail folders and Windows XP couldn't see it. Outlook 2000 wouldn't start until I ran a repair/reinstall from the installation CD Thanks Microsoft! To make it worse I couldn't report this because MS website kicked out an unspecified error in my browser on submission.

Linux to the rescue

I booted into Ubuntu 10.04, installed Wine and Outlook 2003, this loaded and open the file but it wasn't able to show export options. So stuck again.

Amazingly I was able to import the .pst file into Evolution the default mail client in Ubuntu without any hassle at all. But I was at a loss how to get those files in a format that WML or OE might recognise.

So finally I installed readpst from the ubuntu repositories and ran that using Terminal (command line) and that worked very well, separating the calendar, contacts and mail folders with individual messages inside.

I think I neglected to specify the file type so each message file had no file ending! No problem as back in Windows I corrected the unrecognised file type using a bulk file renaming utility adding .eml to the mail messages and .LDIF to the contacts.

Finally I able to drag the messages into Outlook Express – I had to create folders in OE for each converted folder then dragged the contents over. Contacts I had to import individually but as there were only 12 – I settled on .LDIF, but .vcd was very nearly correct too)

In retrospect I could have installed the trial version of Office 2010 on the new pc, possibly saving me this all this hassle but at the time this wasn't available as I had already handed back to it's owner. I'll restore the old mail in the next few days.

But I should not have to install the latest version of an email client in order to be rid of the old one???

I started this piece saying this was lesson in the advisability of widespread use of open formats and open source software because to me there's a fundamental problem with the closed proprietary model exemplified by Microsoft in that they do what they want and the consumer is forced to follow because they fear they will lose their data – music, documents, email, and pictures are all locked in to a closed circuit.

Other mail clients, office suites etc store data in a standard open format which is interoperable with most other programs of the same type but Microsoft does not so you find yourself at their mercy. We lose too much data every day through poor compatibility between programs, and even different versions of the same program

There are some recordings that you watch only once, and others that you will want to watch again. But hard drives fill up and sooner or later you'll want to save them to another disk or DVD.

This is my method - you might find other ways of doing this but for my uses it works well.

I use ubuntu linux and the following programs:

ProjectX - splits, corrects and resynchronises audio and video files
Avidemux - video editor
DeVeDe - DVD creator and menu maker

All are in the Ubuntu repositories so should be easy to install via the Ubuntu Software Centre or Synaptic

I'll also use the command line to combine the newly fixed audio and video files

I still use Avidemux which is a fine progrom for video editing to remove adverts and tidy up the recording, and it also allows you to correct the audio/video sync but this is by trial and error and proved too time consuming and inaccurate in practice. This proved to be the one of the biggest problems and it gets worse when you remove adverts or top and tail the recordings. I have tried a couple of free programs for too correct this, including dgmpgdec157 and version158 but latterly this didn't solve the problem so I stick with to ProjectX.

• The first step is to note the programs you want to save, including the dates and times they were recorded

example: True Blood episode 1 'Strange Love' 07/10/2009 2200

Tip you can filter and copy the details of recordings using MythWeb interface, paste into a plain text document and use this a guide to find recordings from a list later.

• Second step is to locate the recordings

MythTV stores recordings in a folder far far away - namely /var/lib/mythtv/recordings[/FONT]

As I mentioned, recordings are named using the date and time using this convention year month date and time, so the recording we noted above 07/10/2009 starting at 2200 becomes:

xxxx_2009010072200.mpg

where xxxx could be four numbers, these are not relevant here
each recording with also have a similar file ending in .png which you can ignore too

• Copy the recordings to an external drive

Once you have found the recording you want, make sure the external drive is connected and that there's enough space on the drive for the file(s) you want to save too. Now right click on the file and chose Send to the external drive.

Tip - You can sort the files by date order if this helps

• Rename the files on the external drive

Now you are working from the external drive, you should rename the files before you work with them - chose something simple and easy to to recognise - ideally no more than one word

example xxxx200910072200.mpg[/FONT] becomes tb1.mpg
(in the case above this refers to True Blood episode 1)

• Now you are going to split the audio and video, and resync them

This process is necessary because with recordings the audio synch with video is significantly out, resulting in seconds of delay between when a voice is heard and when the person's lips move on screen.

Start ProjectX and load file by clicking the + symbol (marked) at the botton left of the ProjectX window


Now click on the Pre-Settings menu at the top of the project, click on extern and tick the top box in the right hand panel Mpeg2Schnitt idd version: V2/A3, close that window.


Click the 'QuickS..' button on the middle left of the main ProjectX window, the split, correction and resync begins.
ProjectX will exit when the process is complete.

• Selecting the correct audio and video files

With the audio/video problems correct you can now combine the two files. For this we will use the command line, but first you can to make life a little bit easier by identifying and renaming the correct files. This is necessary becuase DVB television signals frequently carry multiple audio channels, if you select the wrong one you'll have audio description or no sound at all!

Navigate to the folder where the files are stored - this will be the same folder where you placed the original recording - you'll see several more files there but the files you need are the files ending .m2v and .mp2

Using the example above:

rename the tb1.m2v and tb1.mp2 files so they become V.m2v and A.mp2 respectively
(V = video and A = audio in case you hadn't guessed already)

Tip: If you see 2 files ending in .mp2, the larger file is likely to be the one you need, try playing it to confirm.

• Combining the audio and video files

Now you are nearly finished - open Terminal from the Applications menu

Applications>Accessories>Terminal

at the prompt type:

[/font]cd /
press enter button after each entry!

now to navigate to the files you just renamed type:

cd media]

now type:

dir

you'll now see a list of the disks available to you, type cd followed by the name of the disk:

cd Data

Unless you filed your recordings in a folder you should be able to work on them, type this to check you are in the right folder:

dir

You should see a list of the files we just created, now the final step is to combine them, type:

mplex -f 8 -o output_file.mpg V.m2v A.mp2

This will take the V.m2v A.mp2 files and combine them into a single file called output_file.mpg.
You could of course change that file title to anything you like.

As a double check this is what my terminal entries would look like:

nell@nell-ubuntu:~$ cd /
nell@nell-ubuntu:/$ cd media
nell@nell-ubuntu:/media$ dir
cdrom cdrom0 Data
nell@nell-ubuntu:/media$ cd Data
nell@nell-ubuntu:/media/Data$ mplex -f 8 -o output_file.mpg V.m2v A.mp2

• Check the file is playing OK, then tidy up un-needed files

If everything is good, you can delete the original recording, and the various files created along the way.

The next step is the easier bit, which is to edit the file to remove adverts and other stuff. See part 2

There are just 3 days to go before the latest version of Ubuntu's linux operating system is released: I tested the a development version of ubuntu linux recently using a Live CD (the OS runs entirely in the system RAM and from the CD, so it doesn't touch your hard drive, though you can access your Windows file systems to test it.

Also using a live CD you can also install additional linux programs and sample them, again great if there's a tool that is lacking in Windows or you need to fix a Windows partition for example. Ypou do need a decent amount of RAM though - I'd suggest at least 1 GB if not more. I digress.

So what's it like? The good news is after the Live CD loads, which takes a bit of time (up to 5 mins) it's slick, those standard office programs, browsers etc load faster than ever. So the basics are great, you get faster boot times and very snappy performance, plenty of programs, a software centre to add more and online storage too.

The less good news for some is they've been mucking about with the look of ubuntu - the logo, colour scheme and icons in the Desktop environment have all changed , again. Booting into this new look is a bit of a shock, it looked half finished when I looked at it about a month ago: Initially it's all new, boot screens are deep plum in colour, a new logo and graphics but at the desktop there's still a lot of that orange/brown colour scheme we all know and some love - this clashes with the plum that persist - frankly it's a mess though redesigned folders and a some new colour schemes look nice.

For some users the biggest shock will be that the developers (Canonical) have changed the order and the position of the minimize/maximize close buttons on each window to the opposite side to 'normal' ie the standard Microsoft Windows arrangement and placement in the top right corner. Before anyone throws their hands up and rejects ubuntu it can be changed easily if you don't get on with it, because unlike windows the OS is open and you can change what ever you like, or don't, anyway the 'fix' is straighforward and available from the ubuntu forums. In practice I found It wasn't that big a deal, it threw me for a moment or two but then I adjusted - actually I liked that to the close a document I had a clear option not to close the program as that button remains on the right, so I will probably keep it long term.

There have also been a few changes with regard to the icons up in the top left of the desktop too - just enough to confuse users from the last version I suspect! Perhaps the most annoying thing about the interface chnages is the move to dark almost black menus - I don't know how others feel about this but I don't like it, in the same way I don't like dark or black web pages - it's not easy to see and can be really painfull when you move on to a more standard pale background!

The second contoversy is that historically ubuntu has featured a full suite of programs like open office, evolution, messenger, including the gimp which is a great open source (free) alternative to Photoshop. That's set to change with 10.04, probably because there wasn't enough space on the CD - out goes The Gimp and in comes a film editing program PiTiVi. What else will go in the next release I wonder...

The reasons given have been varied and pretty weak - Windows doesn't have Photoshop as standard (???), It'a a professional tool people don't use (???), or they use F-Spot instead (???). None of these excuses really cut it with me as I do use it, I don't find it any more complicated than other decent photo editing programs and I avoid F-Spot entirely. So CD disc space is probably the reason. It's a shame as linux and ubuntu needs to showcase the benefits of open-source free software and this is a great program, and together with Inkscape it'll handle almost everything to can throw at it. Rant over I'll just add it via Synaptic or the software centre and blow a raspberry at ubuntu's developers.