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Install Mangler in Ubuntu 11.04

by on Jul.08, 2011, under Tech

I wrote a shell script to do this based on the commands that aerotekit wrote for http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmcxA6VXsX4

Download: http://www.rokkit.net/permanent/install_mangler_ubuntu_11.04.sh

Then in Terminal run:
cd to wherever you downloaded the file, probably in /home/username/Downloads
chmod 755 ./install_mangler_ubuntu_11.04.sh
./install_mangler_ubuntu_11.04.sh

Feel free to share this and to verify its validity.

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Semi-Solid Flow Cell – New Technology for Battery Storage/Use

by on Jun.27, 2011, under Tech

“Cambridge Crude” they call it. Semi-solid flow cell technology is being developed by a few at MIT that may make electric vehicles as viable in the market as current gasoline-based vehicles.

Read it all here: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/flow-batteries-0606.html

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Snow Leopard – Automator – Remove .svn and .DS_Store

by on Jul.12, 2010, under Apple, Programming

Here are the shell scripts for removing .svn and .DS_Store when using an Automator Service script. Just make sure to set the service receive selected to pass files/folders and to do so “As Arguments”.

.svn

for f in "$@"
do
find "$f" -name .svn -print0 | xargs -0 chflags -R nouchg
find "$f" -name .svn -print0 | xargs -0 rm -fr
done

.DS_Store

for f in "$@"
do
find "$f" -name .DS_Store -print0 | xargs -0 rm -fr
done

Now once you save the scripts, you will have a right click contextual item in Finder for folders/files to be able to remove .svn folders and .DS_Store files. I suggest these two scripts be two separate automator workflows and not combined.

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SVN – Operation Not Permitted – Mac

by on Jun.24, 2010, under Tech

I’ve recently had issues where I would create some files/folders in a working copy tree from subversion on my local Mac computer, and eventually would want to remove said files/folders. Sometimes I see the following occur:

rm: ./folder/.svn/all-wcprops: Operation not permitted

That “Operation not permitted” would end up occurring on many of the .svn files.

I found someone who said the following should work:

$ chflags -R nouchg ./folder/
$ chmod -R 777 ./folder/
$ rm -rf ./folder
$ svn cleanup

And it worked like a champ!

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m2ts, SUP, and Forced Subtitles, Oh My!

by on Apr.25, 2010, under Media, Movies, Tech


Photo by MikeEby

[WINDOWS Only]
Attempting to convert a BluRay 1080p movie into MKV can be a bit of a daunting task. I seem to have figured out the easiest method as long as you don’t need to do any video or audio conversion. Any programs mentioned will require your own Googling to find, I will not post any download links.

1.) Open tsMuxerGUI and add the .m2ts file(s). Note, if it’s one .m2ts file, then just add. If it’s multiple .m2ts files you wish to join, add the first one, then join the others to it.
2.) In the tracks section, you should see all the files that make up the .m2ts. There may be many included language audio tracks, many included language subtitle tracks, but there usually is only one video track. Check/uncheck the files you wish to extract.
3.) Make sure you jot down each track’s current settings such as resolution, framerate, etc.
4.) For output, make sure you put the dot in DEMUX and then start demuxing.
5.) Once the files are split, you can then use MKVMerge GUI to merge the files into an MKV file.
6.) In MKVMerge, simply add the files you wish to put into the MKV container. Notice the tracks/chapters/tags it finds.
7.) Click on the video track and then edit the Format Specific Options to match the settings you recorded in #3 (resolution and frame rate especially, examples are 24000/1001 for 23.976fps and 1920×1080 for 1080p video).
8.) Click on the audio track and verify either the default Format Specific Options or alter to match what you recorded in #3.
9.) Subtitles will be discussed below, please read before running MKVMerge Muxing.
10.) Click Start Muxing and the file will be saved as .mkv which should be playable with Plex on Mac, XBMC, and VLC (though VLC has issues at the moment with very high def MKVs).

Subtitles
Subtitles from BluRay may be in .sup format. MKV does NOT support this format right now. Therefore you must convert it to one that it does support. The best I’ve found thus far is converting to VOBsub. A very nice program was written called BDSup2Sub which is a java program.

1.) Load the .sup into BDSup2Sub.
2.) Do not do any conversions unless you need to.
3.) Once loaded, export the subtitles as IDX/SUB (don’t check any boxes, just export).
4.) Then export the subtitles as IDX/SUB as FORCED only (save as a different file name from the one you saved in #3).
5.) In MKVMerge, add both IDX files (which will auto-add the SUBs upon muxing) to the list.
6.) “Forced Track Flag” refers to forcing a track to play always. Set this to “Yes” on the FORCED subtitle track. Set it to “No” on the ALL subtitle track. Set it to “No” for the video and audio tracks.
7.) “Default Track Flag” indicates which track for video, audio, and subtitles respectively will be the default one to play. This is usually only an issue when you have multiple video, audio, or subtitle tracks. In our case, we have 2 subtitle tracks. Set this to “Yes” on the FORCED subtitle track. Set it to “No” on the ALL subtitle track. Set this to “Default” for the video and audio tracks.
8.) Make sure the proper language is set for the subtitle tracks in MKVMerge.

That’s pretty much it.

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The Bloombox

by on Feb.23, 2010, under Tech

Thanks to my coworker Mike for showing me this 60-minutes story about the Bloombox:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

This could be the first step in cheap, clean energy. If it can power a house, it can definitely power a car.

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Mac Mini Fan Constantly Running?

by on Feb.12, 2010, under Apple, Tech

Did you recently upgrade your hard drive, or RAM in your mac mini?  I did, and I found out that the fan constantly ran simply because I forgot to reconnect the fan control wire (thermal wire).  Below is my mac mini spec:

And here is a shot of the fan wire that needed to be plugged in.

When pulling apart the mini, that cable has to be unplugged.  It’s very easy to forget you did it.  Therefore, if you have to open the mini up again, don’t pull it apart, all you have to do is remove the frame, and then you have access to the wire to plug it in.  Hope you have small fingers :)

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