The Flow of Consciousness

VLC 1.1.0 was just released few hours ago. VLC is a fantastic media player and I use it on all of the operating systems I use (Ubuntu Linux, Mac OS X, Windows 7). It’ll play just about any format and do it wonderfully. It’s easier to use than Rhythmbox, Quicktime, or Windows Media Player for watching movies or iTunes for quick listening of an audio file.

Anyway, among new features are VP8 support (Google’s newly open sourced video format), lossless MPEG-4 support, AMR-NB support for audio in cellphone video, CDDB/CDTEXT on Windows when listening to CDs, and lots more.

A big feature in this release of VLC is the ability to decode video using the computer’s graphics card. You’ll need an nVidia graphics card to really benefit from it, though.

I decided to give it a quick test myself before upgrading from VLC 1.0.5 on my Windows 7 box. I played back a 720p HD rip of Adventureland and Back to the Future 3. Both were encoded with 23.97 fps H264 for video. Adventureland used DTSfor audio, while Back to the Future 3 used a52. I watched about 5 minutes of each and watched the Task Manager. For both movies, the CPU usage stayed between 15% and 30%, while memory usage stayed around 92,000 kilobytes.

Then, I upgraded to VLC 1.1.0 and enabled GPU support in the preferences. I watched the same parts. Both videos used the slightly less CPU, but less memory.

“What gives?” I thought. So, I did some research. I found the wiki article on VLC GPU Decoding and found that a video card using VP2 or newer is required. There’s a link to a table on Wikipedia showing the version of PureVideo support in each video card. Unfortunately, my 8800 GTX doesn’t support VP2.

Oh well, I guess I get to wait for the next video card I buy. However, if you own a video card made in the last 3 years, you probably have support for it, so go forth and enjoy low CPU usage when you’re watching videos.

A month ago, I mused purchasing a 13″ MacBook Pro. My primary reasons for considering the MBP were the freedom of OS choice, “seeing what all the fuss is about,” premium hardware for just a couple hundred dollars more, excellent customer support, and a healthy dose of nostalgia.

Approximately a week after writing the post, a friend let me know of a rare deal: a friend of his who just so happens to be an Apple authorized reseller was in jeopardy of losing her authorization because her sales were really low. In order to meet her goal, she was selling Apple hardware at cost. You can’t beat cost! Combine that ~$300 savings with putting the purchase on a credit card with excellent rewards, and it would put me over the edge of my reward amount needed to get myself with a free flight worth about $400.

So, I bought a stock mid-level 13″ MacBook Pro, the one with a 2.53 GHz Core2Duo, 4 GB of DDR3, and a 250 GB HDD. I did get AppleCare and a remote, although the remote was backordered and mysteriously hasn’t arrived yet (should hear why on Monday).

My thoughts?

Summary

I’ll never go back. Apple has a solid hardware product with bells and whistles which themselves make me glad I bought it, plus a slick operating system which appeases my desire for an easy-to-use, on-the-go environment.

TL;DR version

and it had been on for ~20 minutes

Hardware. Seven hours of battery life. Seriously. I got right around that many hours the day I took this screenshot about a week after I bought it. The multitouch touchpad with its gestures are amazing and have seriously changed how I use a touchpad–even more once I enabled tap-to-click I miss them when I use a non-Mac laptop. The magnetic power cord connector should be on every computer: it’s saved my ass twice now. The graphics card is enough to handle Left4Dead with most of the settings on medium, and it’ll certainly handle the older games and casual games I tend to play more often these days. The screen color is amazing and the keyboard is the most welcoming keyboard I’ve ever used. This is the first line of Mac laptops with an SD card reader, and that’s indispensable for me these days with the dog show photography I’ve been doing.

Downsides? I’m not too hot about the non-removable battery, but I’ve never needed a second battery even on my old Averatec which had approximately two hours of battery life. Apple made a data-driven design decision when choosing this path. I’ve not heard many complains except from people who are resistant to change. Folks who really need another battery can suffice for the hour-long charge time while plugged into something like a HyperMac battery. I also wish it had a real microphone port, but how often do I actually use a microphone? Never. The built-in mic is sufficient for almost everything I’d ever use it for. I’m also not too hot about the lack of a DVI or HDMI port and a mini-Displayport instead, but it’s another data-driven design decision and technically Displayport is a better standard for video. I ordered an adapter from Amazon; it’ll arrive this week.

Software. Mac OS X isn’t new to me. I used 10.5 on Jon’s Macbook when I borrowed it for a few months last year, and used 10.1 back in high school. It’s not a huge adjustment for me, so I’ll not go over such nuances. However, there are a few things I must highlight, primarily so that Linux folks like myself can mirror these features in Ubuntu, Fedora, and the like.

Time Machine is indispensible. I configured Time Machine to work with my QNAP NAS and it backs up regularly. The whole system! Efficiently! Recoverably! With an excellent interface for both setup and browsing and recovery. rdiff-backup pulls this off on Linux, but there’s no “don’t make me thing” GUI for it like there is for Time Machine.

Drag-and-drop installation of programs has always been one of my favorite things about OSX. No complicated installer program with click-through EULAs, no broken packages or forced upgrades. Sure, the packages are larger because of universal binaries and statically linked libraries, but I’d rather take up another 10 MB if it means I can simply drop an icon in a directory to install it, or move it to the recycle bin to remove it. I’ve been using iUseThis to track my used programs and combining it with AppFresh for version updates.

OSX is just Unix-y enough for a lot of the stuff I do. MacPorts gives me access to a lot of utilities, especially Synergy, which allows me to use the mouse and keyboard of one computer on another via a network connection. I’ve also used it for up-to-date Python and other scripting and development tools. I use Visor to give me a drop-down, Quake-style terminal in which I do lots of command line stuff, primarily via an SSH connection to one of my many Linux computers.

Perhaps one of the most care-free benefits of OSX for me is painless hibernate, sleep, and suspend. I can shut the lid and forget about it. I’ve rebooted the Mac maybe thrice in the month I’ve had it (outside of OSX updates). I’ve never seen Linux or Windows hibernate/suspend working this well on any hardware.

Downsides? There aren’t many. Sometimes I get frustrated when I can’t find an OSX analogue for a Linux program I’ve used. I have yet to find a decent microblogging client which I like as much as Gwibber on Linux. Despite being written in the highly-portable Python language, Gwibber depends on a few things that OSX just doesn’t provide. I’ve tried Tweetdeck, Nambu, Spry, and a host of others, but just can’t find the feature set I want (eveything most clients have, plus Identica, Facebook, and Flickr plugins). Twirl comes the closest, so I’ve been using it. Eventbox is showing promise as it becomes Socialite, but I’ve yet to actually see it in action.

I’ll eventually get around to trying out Virtualbox‘s 3D acceleration for some Windows games, or Wine and WineBottler for some others.

A major problem I have with my OS choices is that I like to tinker. OSX gives me the freedom to tinker with a lot of things, but its defaults suffice for almost everything. I think it’ll be more difficult for me to screw up OSX than it is for me to screw up Linux or Windows.

TL;DR summary:

I’m pleased with my purchase and haven’t had the buyer’s remorse I’ve had sometimes when making such a giant purchase. The MacBook Pro laptop was designed with both low-level and power users in mind, and I highly appreciate it. It’s just enough to not be too much.

For some time, I’ve been considering buying a new laptop computer. I’ve been primarily considering a 13″ MacBook Pro with a 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, and all of the fixins that come with it. I’d be adding only the Apple Remote and possibly the AppleCare extended warranty.

Why a Mac? Primarily, freedom of choice. If I buy a standard Windows, Linux, or OS-less computer, it’s unlikely that it will run Mac OS X as a Hackintosh. Mac laptops will run Mac OS X, Windows, and (Ubuntu) Linux. Running all three OSes gives me the widest choice of what tool I want to use for a particular task. I imagine that I’ll be using Mac OS X most of the time, switching to Windows for gaming on the go, and using Ubuntu in a VirtualBox, VMWare, or Parallels virtual machine when I need my Linux fix. I’m a software developer, so having access to the emerging mobile market (iPhone development with Xcode, Android development with Eclipse) as well as the established markets (system and web development) is important.

I’m a desktop Ubuntu user and prefer it for my day-to-day usage. I’m open to the idea of seeing what Mac OS X has to offer, but I’ll still have my desktop around for normal usage. I’ve been without a regular laptop for nearly 8 months (been using my XO every now and then), and I hadn’t really missed it until I started working at Vivísimo. It could be peer pressure (I’d estimate that half of the company uses Macs for development, system and web), or it could be seeing a lot of people very happy with their choice.

There’s also a bit of nostalgia in going back to Mac. I used Mac OS from 7.0 until 9.0, then briefly used OS X 10.1 at the end of high school, followed by some OS X 10.5 on a 13″ MacBook earlier this year.

Also, I compared the hardware, and for similar specs, the MacBook is only $100-$200 more compared to most offerings from MSI, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo, and HP at NewEgg, Amazon, and the like. This is a sizeable but understandable difference for the quality of hardware and, most of all, quality of customer support.

The biggest problem for me is simply figuring out where to buy it. I’m cautiously arranging for this purchase in my finances, and I think I’ll be ready before the end of September. I made this chart to show potential places I could purchase it.

The cheapest option seems to be Apple refurbished plus the $124 AppleCare plan from eBay. I’m also considering the MacMall sans AppleCare, as it includes Parallels for free after rebate. Currently, I see it like this: Apple (refurb) > MacMall > Apple (edu) > Amazon > Apple (new) > Buy.com. I have no qualms about refurbished things–they’re good as new most of the time, and I’ll have a hard shell on this within a month of purchasing it.

I’m wary of AppleCare, though, but I see its usefulness. I got a five year warranty on my Dell monitor in 2006 and I’ve used it three times already. I plan to replace the 250 GB hard drive which comes with the MBP 13″ with a 128 GB SSD I can get on the super cheap. I don’t really have a need for a ton of hard drive space, even with three OSes installed. I can stream my music, and my pictures will remain on my desktop. I have a VPN into my FiOS-connected apartment, so remotely accessing things on my NAS or desktop wouldn’t be an issue. I’d see faster boots and faster loads, plus some battery life savings.

The downside–the primary reason I mention this–is that, if I mess up when installing the SSD (unlikely), I void the warranty. An ill-informed Apple Genius tried to convince me that simply opening the back voids the warranty, but he is sorely mistaken. Replacing the insides of a MacBook Pro does not void the warranty based on the simple action of replacing them. One must really screw up something and Apple must prove that the replacement screwed up other things (hard to prove!).

I’ll likely up the memory when DDR3 prices come down, too.

So, Internet friends, readers, countrymen, I ask you this: talk me out of this, or talk me into it. I need a decently powered, long life battery-ed, light gaming capable, webcam having, OSX/Windows/Ubuntu capable laptop for cheaper than the above. Bonus points for benefits and drawbacks of AppleCare, as most folks to whom I’ve spoken haven’t gotten it based on cost alone.

Keep the fanboyism to a minimum, please, and do be constructively critical.

This script might work for other phones, as well. I only have access to an LG VX-8300. Presumably, this would work on all phones newer than it.

#!/bin/bash
echo "Encoding ${1}..."
ffmpeg -i "${1}" -acodec aac -ab 64K -ac 1 -ar 22050 \
                 -vcodec mpeg4 -s qcif -r 15 \
                 "${1}.3gp"

This works perfectly for me, reducing certain YouTube videos to something portable

Creative Labs message boards user Daniel_K had been modifying the Vista driver to re-enable functionality which was apparently available on Windows XP but disabled for Vista. In a somewhat DMCA-like claim this past Friday, Phil O’Shaughnessy, VP Corporate Communications at Creative Labs, wrote a message on Creative’s message boards asking using user Daniel_K “to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP.” This created an immense outcry from folks who have paid a premium for Creative’s X-Fi line of sound cards, which is “intentionally crippled” on Vista. Creative doesn’t seem to care, though. “If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.” It appears that the modified drivers are still available, but will no longer be updated as per Creative’s request.

I wish Creative would release a fully-working Linux driver. Even though I did get the Linux X-Fi driver working, Ubuntu still freezes 2 out of 5 times I boot and even then some sounds are completely distorted, such as Pidgin’s.

What is happening to the computer hardware industry? Seriously. nVidia’s crappy drivers drove me bonkers, and from Windows 32-bit to 64-bit, where I’ve had almost no problems. Creative’s shenanigans will keep me off of Vista, and even the modded drivers won’t work because I have 8 GB of RAM, and there’s a note in the driver package which says that the drivers will crash the computer if there is more than 2 GB of RAM available.

I’m surprised that Creative doesn’t have a class-action lawsuit against it for false advertising. It touts features of the card on the box, but these features aren’t available on all of its supported platforms, and there’s no note saying that. Tsk tsk, Creative. You get a wag of the finger today.

These Crysis freeze issues which I’ve been having are apparently related to something which I know exists but I’ve never actually seen a program do it. Crysis, when played on the highest possible settings, will attempt to surpass the 2 GB virtual address space limit of 32-bit operating systems, such as Windows XP.

Only the 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista can run Crysis at its high settings, apparently.

I discovered this last night after reading a few forum posts about folks trying to get the game to run on Windows 2000 and then using Process Explorer to actually watch Crysis hit the 2 GB limit and subsequently crash. It’s really quite amazing watching Crysis hit 500,000 page faults within five minutes of starting it.

So, in short, if you’re using 32-bit Windows and Crysis is repeatedly crashing, try lowering the settings. It’s not that your hardware can’t handle it—your operating system, by design, can’t.

Rhettigan: I think you’ve fallen prey to the Gambler’s Fallacy
Rhettigan: just because Windows Vista worked this time
Rhettigan: doesn’t mean it will work next time

I received a few days ago an ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe motherboard for review at ThinkComputers. I finally got some time to install it today, replacing the Foxconn C51XEM2AA motherboard I’d been using since October.

The first order of business was to work on the review, so I slid in an extra hard drive and installed Windows XP Professional 64-bit onto it before I replaced the Foxconn board. I had no problems at all—I was able to finish the entirety of the benchmark suite without a single crash.

So, with that having been completed, I went about swapping the boards. The ASUS board is pretty neat—there’s a lot of heat pipes and passive cooling, and even a memory cooler. I’m not going to go on and on about it here; read the review when it gets posted.

I booted it, and was immediately prompted to reactivate Windows. I had to wait until I installed the NIC driver to do so, but it went through without a problem. I installed the remainder of the drivers and started benchmarking.

Then, it started: BLUE SCREENS GALORE. I doubled checked all of the packages I’d downloaded to ensure they were all 64-bit packages. Obviously, they were. So, I dealt with it. Windows would crash with STOP 0×50: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA or something like that. It means that a driver, in this case disk.sys, tried to access a piece of memory that didn’t exist.

I figured that Windows didn’t like the motherboard swap, so I’d save myself a little bit of time and do a repair installation. Not only did the repair installation crap out near the end, but it didn’t help. When I finally got it up and running, I had to reactivate Windows. I still had consistent stop errors.

I decided to do a full re-installation. This time, I’d used all of my activations and had to spend 15 minutes on the phone with Microsoft’s activation people to get that squared away.

I still have blue screens. They are random, they are without warning. I seem to be the only person having this problem, as searches turn up nothing useful.

Frustrated and wanting to give up on Windows and get some other work done, I switched back to my other hard drive (I’d pulled its SATA cable to prevent myself from accidentally munging my Ubuntu install and my coveted save games and media files from previous builds on my Windows install). I didn’t want to mess with Windows at all, so I booted Ubuntu.

It booted straight up. It was like I’d not even switched the boards. Restricted Drivers Manager automatically enabled the Atheros drivers required for the built-in WiFi module. It recognized all the new devices without a hitch, and transparently! I’d even switched the hard drive’s SATA channels, something I figured would throw off GRUB (the bootloader) and frustrate me even more. Nope.

Can Windows survive a motherboard switch? No.
Can Ubuntu, and probably most other Linuxes, survive a motherboard switch? Yes.

I found today a fantastic Windows theme to use with Wine on Ubuntu. It’s called Human for Windows.

1. Download the zip file and extract it somewhere. I put it into ~/.wine so that it’s out of sight.
2. Fire up winecfg at a terminal, or go to Applications > Wine > Configure Wine from the menu.
3. Go to the Desktop Integration tab.
4. Click Install Theme… and find where you put the extracted folder.
5. Go inside it and open Human.msstyles.
6. Change the drop down to Human.
7. Hit OK.

Combine this with the mIRC on Linux tutorial from a few weeks ago, and the result is an mIRC that looks like it belongs in Ubuntu.