Tech
Star Wars: The Old Republic – A Comic-Con 2010 Panel
by justin on Jul.26, 2010, under Gaming
Snow Leopard – Automator – Remove .svn and .DS_Store
by justin 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
do
find "$f" -name .svn -print0 | xargs -0 chflags -R nouchg
find "$f" -name .svn -print0 | xargs -0 rm -fr
done
.DS_Store
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.
SVN – Operation Not Permitted – Mac
by justin 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:
That “Operation not permitted” would end up occurring on many of the .svn files.
I found someone who said the following should work:
$ chmod -R 777 ./folder/
$ rm -rf ./folder
$ svn cleanup
And it worked like a champ!
Let’s see HTML5 do this
by justin on Apr.28, 2010, under Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex
http://www.playedonline.com/game/598161/super-mario-crossover.html
I’d put the actual SWF in this post except that there’s no way to disable the audio that I know of.
m2ts, SUP, and Forced Subtitles, Oh My!
by justin 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.
HTML5 and the Adobe Flash Platform, the Misconceptions
by justin on Feb.24, 2010, under Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Tech
According to this article and the W3C, HTML5 will provide some great enhancements to the HTML spec. One of which is the ability to embed audio and video directly into a website using new <audio> and <video> tags.
I hear and read quite a bit where people are making the claim that HTML5 is a Flash killer. Honestly I think these people need to have their head examined, but more appropriately they need to understand the Flash platform itself. Yes, it is true that Flash is the primary platform used to distribute video content on large sites such as YouTube, Hulu, and Xfinity’s Fancast. YouTube, of course, recently announced that they are starting trials of HTML5 video in place of the Flash player. Therefore it’s quite true that for video content, HTML5 will eat into Flash’s video marketshare.
Misconception #1: HTML5 is ready for primetime. It’s not. Understand that the browser has to support these new HTML5 elements. As you can see on this layout engine chart, not every parser is currently supporting the new tags such as <video>. Most notably is Internet Explorer’s Trident engine. HTML5 isn’t even prepared to be finalized as a specification until 2012, and then not even recommended by the W3C until 2022.
Misconception #2: Flash is only used for video. Obviously not. People have been using Flash to play games going back to the Yeti hitting the penguin, Bejeweled, and more. With the advent of Adobe Flex, the world is also seeing more Rich Internet Applications being developed on the Flash platform, not just with in-house applications for corporations, but also for the everyday consumer such as photoshop.com. While Flash’s ubiquity is highly contributed by video playback, video simply isn’t the only thing the platform can do. HTML5, in and of itself, does not play any more part in stealing marketshare from Flash as an application platform than HTML4. AJAX and other low-impact client-server technologies obviously play a part, but that is independent of the HTML5 spec.
Misconception #3: HTML5 will diminish Flash because Flash crashes browsers with high memory usage, high CPU usage, and for being insecure. Wrong again. Despite what Steve Jobs may feel about Flash, Adobe, and previously Macromedia, has painstakingly worked on the Flash platform to minimize its own memory and CPU footprint as well as provide many security constraints to thwart content injections and misuse of applications. As with any other platform (OS-level or VM-level), it is up to the programmer to profile their application and determine where high CPU usage occurs and memory leaks can be found. Flash as a platform is not the reason browsers crash. Faulty programs are. This is true in almost every form of any operating system or virtual machine found today.
While I would agree that HTML5 is going to become yet another good enhancement to the HTML specification, and that it will provide an alternative to Flash concerning audio and video embedded content, it is by far never going to cause Flash to meet up with Elvis and the do-do bird. People who are employed in Flash and Flex jobs have nothing to worry about in the coming years. In fact, Flash and Flex jobs currently are a booming market. People have criticized Flash since its inception, but the platform perseveres and the new 10.1 version offers a lot to be excited about especially in the mobile market.
The Bloombox
by justin on Feb.23, 2010, under Tech
Thanks to my coworker Mike for showing me this 60-minutes story about the Bloombox:
This could be the first step in cheap, clean energy. If it can power a house, it can definitely power a car.
Mac Mini Fan Constantly Running?
by justin 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 
