7 Habits for effective text editing 2.0

Being a Vi enthusiast, I am always on the look out for articles related to Vi, or rather Vi's modern avatar Vim - the versatile text editor created by Bram Moolenaar. In the past, this blog has seen a number of posts related to Vim. In fact if you ask me, the proverb "Too much of a thing" doesn't hold true for Vim.

It can easily take you a life time to learn each and every aspect of Vim though in most cases you can get along quite well by mastering just a couple of Vi commands. The sheer number of features and the permutations and combinations are that many. Then you have branched projects which aim to make Vim much more easier for the average computer user. Cream for Vim being a case to the point.

Today I stumbled upon this video which explains the 7 Habits for effective text editing in Vim which I found informative. The video is one of the series of Google TechTalks. In this video, Bram Moolenaar himself talks on the most efficient ways of editing text in Vim. The regular readers of this blog will know that Bram Moolenaar now works for Google.

The preamble of Google TechTalks goes thus :

Google TeckTalks are designed to disseminate a wide spectrum of views on topics including Current Affairs, Science, Medicine, Engineering, Business, Humanities, Law, Entertainment, and the Arts.

The video is a bit large (over 500 MB in size) and stretches over 1 hour. So make sure you have the required bandwidth to view the video. It is every bit worth watching.

An interesting marketing campaign by Red Hat

What does a company whose main (or only) source of income is from providing services and support for its products to enterprises do when its territory is threatened by competition ? It embarks on a massive marketing campaign highlighting its advantages over similar services and products offered by its competition.

That is exactly what Red Hat is doing but with a difference. It is actively using the free resources available on the Internet to kick start its advertising campaign. More specifically, it has uploaded a collection of videos on Youtube which highlight the advantages of using its latest offering Red Hat Enterprise Linux ver 5.0. The videos are in the garb of "Technology Lessons" and are short, to the point and quite entertaining to watch.

Revolution OS - an award winning documentary which traverses the path of Free Software, Open Source and Linux

This is one of the finest documentaries created which traces the path taken by GNU, Free Software, Open Source and Linux. The whole documentary all of 1 hour and 10 minutes long consists of bits and pieces of conversation with various leaders of the community which of course includes Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond, Richard M Stallman, Bruce Perens and many others.

In the documentary, Linus Torvalds calls RMS the great philosopher of the movement and himself the engineer.

It clearly brings to fore the idea of GNU and Free Software, GPL and copy left, the history of Linux, the concept of Open Source, and in what way Open Source is different from Free software. The documentary produced by J.T.S Moore also shows snippets of publicity the movement received in the main stream media such as in CNBC and The New York Times. The documentary even feature a couple of appearances of some prominent people from Slashdot.

And at the end of it all, you get to hear an excellent rendition of the Free Software song.

It is worth noting that Revolution OS won Best Documentary at both the Savannah Film & Video Festival and the Kudzu Film Festival.

All in all a beautiful piece of work worth watching which tells the inside story of the hackers who rebelled against the proprietary software model and Microsoft to create GNU/Linux and the Open Source movement. One way to support the cause would be by buying a copy of Revolution OS DVD from their website. For now you can watch the documentary below (Courtesy: Google Video).

Update (2nd May 2007): The google video link has been removed because of concerns raised that it could have been pirated and was made available without the permission of the producer. And I believe the right thing to do under the circumstance is to buy the video and watch.
You may listen to an interview with J.T.S Moore here. [Ogg File].

A new way to look at networking

Van Jacobson is a research fellow at PARC. Prior to that, he was the Chief Scientist and co-founder of Packet Design, Chief Scientist at Cisco and has also headed the Network Research group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Van talks at Google Tech Talks about the concept of a network and how it enables the efficient transfer of data from one remote location to another. In the talk Van laments how the network research in the US has stuck in a dead end for the past decade or so and it should be a wonderful time for networking as every thing is connected to everything else, there are cell phones, computers, laptops, PDAs and so on and each can be connected with each other. But unfortunately as Van puts it every thing we do with networking is getting harder. Wireless barely works and information or data is not at sync with all the diverse devices we use. In his talk he puts forward his idea of how networking can be made simpler.

A very informative talk worth watching by anyone who is interested in knowing how computer networks work. Duration: 1 Hr 21 Min

FFmpeg tutorial - Develop a video application in less than 1000 lines of code

FFmpeg is a library which can be used to build applications that record, convert and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec, the leading audio/video codec library. FFmpeg is developed under Linux, but it can compiled under most operating systems, including Windows.

The FFmpeg toolkit consists of a number of programs them being :

• ffmpeg - which can be used to convert one video format to another. Say you want to convert a YouTube video in flv format to mpeg format, this tool will help you convert it.
• ffserver - This is a HTTP server which can be used to stream audio and video across the web.
• ffplay - is a simple media player based on SDL and on the FFmpeg libraries.
• libavcodec - a library containing all the FFmpeg audio/video encoders and decoders. Most codecs were developped from scratch to ensure best performances and high code reusability and ...
  
• libavformat - which is a library containing parsers and generators for all common audio/video formats.
  

I came across this excellent tutorial on Ffmpeg where the author demonstrates how to develop a video player in less than 1000 lines of code. Just so you know, one of the prerequisites of understanding the tutorial is some knowledge of the C language.

While on the subject of videos, you may also be interested in the different ways of creating screencasts in Linux.

Ubuntu sources.list online generator

Are you thinking of installing Fedora 7 on your machine ? If you are, then you should take a look at the Fedora 7 installation screenshots I had posted previously.

But if you need something even better such as a video of the installation steps then you should check out the three part video put together at linux.com.

Roblimo Miller the chief editor at OSTG has put together a series of three videos demonstrating all the steps needed to get up and running in Fedora 7. The videos explain the full installation of Fedora 7 from start to finish, First boot after the install and lastly Adding and removing software in Fedora 7.

The videos are made available in two formats ie. Flash and Ogg files and have been released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. So you are free to download and share the videos with anybody.

I found all three videos to be clear, precise and to the point in explaining and showing each tasks. In short a must watch for all Linux neophytes interested in installing Fedora 7.

You can view the Fedora 7 video tour here. On a different note, I also found the Kubuntu 7.04 video tour equally interesting.

September to be one Ubuntu screencast per day month

September 2007 is going to be a special month for the Ubuntu enthusiasts and would be converts. In this month, you get to view videos of accomplishing various tasks in Ubuntu at the rate of one screencast per day.

Each screencast will be made available through the Ubuntu Screencast site in three sizes and two formats (OGG and Flash). The screencasts are licensed under the permissive Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License, so you're free to modify, pass on, sell or otherwise distribute them so long as the attribution stays intact.

In fact, you do not have to wait for September to begin as the Ubunut screencast website already has a collection of videos which explain topics such as Samba file sharing, Printing in Ubuntu, Customizing Ubuntu desktop and many others as well.

So do check out the screencasts and bookmark the site as well for future reference.

How to create a custom DVD from multiple video formats

I have always found it a hassle to convert a video file from one format to another in Linux for lack of (or rather, not being aware of) a good Free video conversion suite. I have tried converting an Avi file to another format such as mp4 using some software but the results were far from satisfactory. I take it that it has more to do with the settings I selected than the fault of the software I used.

Axel has written a quite detailed article explaining how to create a custom DVD using a Free video conversion software called DeVeDe. What is really interesting about his article is that he shows the exact settings he used in the conversion - a big factor if you want your converted video file to have more or less the same quality. In fact my experience shows that you need to get the ratio of number of frames per second with respect to resolution of the video right else the quality of the video might suffer.

Fig: DeVeDe software interface

He has used the Windows version of DeVeDe but this is a software which is available for Linux as well. For example, in Ubuntu, you can install this software using the command :

$ sudo apt-get install devede

You need to have Mplayer, Mencoder, DVDAuthor, VCDImager, MKisofs and all the proprietary codecs installed though since DeVeDe is just a front-end. More over since DeVeDe is a Python script, it requires Python as well. For more details on the actual steps required to convert a video file from one format to another, do read the guide.

A collection of best rated videos on C++

Here is a collection of best rated videos on C++. These videos have been collected from a variety of sources such as Stanford university, reconnectworks and even a lecture by Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup the creator of C++.

The Stanford University lectures are very clear and start with the basics in an attempt to teach C++. Each lecture is about an hour and a half long.

It starts with the very basics and ends with sophisticated example of tracking code. The content of each lecture is roughly the following…

1. session 1: basic declarations, conditional structure, operators.
2. session 2: pointers and functions.
3. session 3: introduction to classes including operator overloading using 3-Vector from CLHEP (class library for high energy physics) as an example.
4. session 4; more on classes with arrays and lists and including templates.
5. session 5: introduction to inheritance and some thoughts on class design and dealing with legacy code.
6. session 6: polymorphic inheritance with a large example taken from a simulation code.
   

These series of lectures are not a "hands-on" style ones. Only few practical exercises are suggested in the lectures. The students are expected to take their own initiatives in getting started.

By the end of the course, one should be able to read most C++ code written by others and be on their way to using C++ in their own work.

Link to the video lectures

Massive list of free educational video lectures - courtesy Berkeley and MIT

A couple of years back, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) released a press note revealing their intention to make available free of cost the study notes which includes lectures, tutorials, video and audio of lectures of all their courses online. This was big news then and was welcomed by aspiring professionals and institutions the world over. And MIT Opencourseware was the platform chosen to deliver on their promise.

In fact you can find a huge collection of video lectures (which this post is about) on the MIT opencourseware website. The lectures are divided into their respective sections which makes it quite easy to find what you need.

Also check out this web page which features links to over 177 video lectures from the Berkeley University as well as links to other online educational resources. A very good resource worth bookmarking.

Blue-ray vs HD DVD Format war move closer to an end

Blue-ray and HD DVD are two divergent high-density optical disc formats for the storage of digital information, including high-definition video. For a couple of years now there has been a war of sorts going on between the Blue-Ray and HD DVD camps to gain dominance over how people would view future digital entertainment.

Of late, the HD DVD format has taken a beating with Warner Bros. deciding to release all its movies exclusively in Blue-ray format. Now only Universal, Paramount Pictures and a few minor ones from the movie industry are still in the HD DVD camp with 20th Century Fox,New line, Sony Pictures, Buena Vista and of course Warner Bros firmly entrenched in the Blue-ray camp. This means that over 70% of Hollywood's movie output will be released in Blue-ray discs.

Fig: Industry support for HD DVD and Blue-ray formats

Blue-ray discs sales in the US is ahead enjoying 65% of the market over HD-DVD's 35% which is another factor which pushes Blue-ray closer to becoming the industry standard.

Fig: Blue-ray enjoys a 65% market share at present

HD DVD specifications

• Capacity : 15 GB (Single layer), 30 GB (Dual layer) and 51GB (Triple layer)
• File systems supported : ISO9660, Universal Disc Format (UDF)
• Region encoding : None
• Backward compatible : Yes
• DRM : Optional but can be incorporated.
  

Blue-ray specifications

• Capacity : 25 GB (Single layer), 50 GB (Dual layer)
• Region encoding : Yes (Divided into three regions)
• Backward compatible : Optional. Left to the manufacturers.
• DRM : Support for several layers of DRM
  

As you can see, Blue-ray has a clear advantage as far as the specifications are concerned. As an end note, here is a funny video clip featuring none other than Hitler ranting over the imminent demise of HD-DVD format.

Keynote address by Aaron J Seigo at the KDE 4.0 release event

On January 18th 2008, Aaron J Seigo, President of KDE e.V. and its lead developer gave a keynote address at the KDE 4.0 release event held at Google campus in Mountain View, California. This is a video recording of this august event. In his talk, Aaron gives a birds eye view of the different features in KDE 4.0 as well as a glimpse into the future of KDE 4.

The video is in streaming format and unfortunately Google has not provided a download link with it. So for those who are interested in downloading the video to view it in their free time, can do so using the 'wget' utility as follows :

wget -c --output-document=kde4keynote.mp4 "http://vp.video.google.com/videodownload?version=0&secureurl=twAAANo77xYbVm8VXV5rhG_qPPpRNCbSEwfixV2tMd2j4Uo4ntmtDVLDPHv8b_tQPoUJLJU8lvIfj47OgHJ7bJ4RRwep_TFHvSGSreO8JGQSiA1OxXR4qiGM8upVqU__NCUyGZLbQ1xofY2aPsatvJBqPpJjooYujsvezZduVlne8N2e2jgrjNJkf5JlwHBHpMBkCbzReaQPOoPrQMFpRTM9jkLcsAGjye2-MJbx_0ydYM3cfayiofNm3hE1SmvOtnBW8g&sigh=eklYkc_l10OrI60da0Ybj7O8_oY&begin=0&len=466236"

Those who have a broadband internet connection can watch it below.

Also take a look at the talks given by a number of other delegates at the KDE 4.0 release event.

Enable DVD playback in Ubuntu

I am sure any Ubuntu user will swear by the fact that it is a piece of cake getting multimedia to work in Ubuntu. In fact Ubuntu walks a fine line in ensuring that the users who are passionate about freedom and those who are keen on functionality are provided for.

But playing encrypted DVDs is a bit trickier. Tech-recipes.com provides a simple way of enabling DVD playback in Ubuntu.

In fact there are just two simple steps namely,

$ sudo apt-get install totem-xine libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdread3

and

$ sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh