Dirk.Net

My Microsoft Annoyance du Jour: Trying to download Live Writer Beta 3 from any computer located in Thailand will bring up a Thai download screen. While I have problem with the Thai page as such I’m not too keen on having the Thai version of the program with all dialogs and help in Thai but this is the only choice:

There is no option to choose another language, and every browser I tested (Opera, IE6, Firefox 1.5) will not let me download the US-English version regardless of browser language settings. I presume this is localization going overboard at Microsoft because there are speakers of many different languages in most countries, including this one. Anyway, here is a download link for the US-English version of Live Writer Beta 3. 

Happy having found the link, MS delivers another blow (they’re good at that):

I’m running Windows Server 2003 and Windows Live Writer Beta 3 (unlike Beta 2) only supports 32-bit Vista (64-bit hacked, get your hex editor ready to install Live stuff) and XP SP2. Bummer. Microsoft continues the practice of forcing users to upgrade to a newer OS by means of getting users hooked on free MS offerings.
It’s now practically impossible to get a MSN Messenger client for Windows 2000 as older clients are denied entry to the service. I know, I know, Win2K is not supported anymore. But this is no justification for forcing users out of a service they’re used to and have built contacts on if they don’t want to upgrade their OS. Besides that, most Live offerings (especially Messenger) have gone from lightweight and functional to the MS-typical buggy bloat (read some comments), with Liver Writer being the exception. For now I’ll be using Beta 2 while looking at ScribeFire and not hold my breath for any Live offering supporting my OS. 

Foobar 2000 is a great mp3 player, so I was looking for a way to create “sub-playlists” of my main MP3 folder from searches (for artists, mainly) that I could then export to RockBox. The iPod sucks is weak for creating playlists, but this basically due to the lack of a keyboard. Entering letters is the iPod clickwheel is truly a chore. After some searching and trying a couple of plugins that didn’t work for some reason I found the QuickSearch toolbar plugin for foobar 2000 (grab it now as the referring pages might be deleted any day now, here’s the foobar 2000 0.8.x version). It lets you create quick searches of your main playlist which can then be saved as a new m3u8 playlist. This you just have to throw into your /Playlists directory in foobar on your iPod, after removing any drive letters and replacing all backslashes with forward slashes with any text editor. Then just browser the playlists on your iPod and enjoy. Note: This will not work with iTunes which should be replaced with RockBox anyway. Hope it helps.

Update: Of course the above can be achieved much more easily within RockBox:

Be sure to have SETTINGS>GENERAL SETTINGS>PLAYLIST>RECURSIVELY INSERT DIRECTORIES set to YES.

Files>LONG SELECT (keep iPod Select-Button pressed for a second or so) the Folder with the files you want to add to your playlist>Playlist Catalog>Add to New Playlist. Now (try to) create a name for your new playlist with the RockBox “Virtual Keyboard” which may take some practice. Two things: No need to create a file extension as this will be appended automatically, and pressing Play will save everything you have entered and start the insertion process. You might wanna just create a short playlist name and later edit it with a file system explorer when your iPod is connected to your PC or Mac.

That’s it. The new playlist will be in the /Playlists directory with the m3u8 extension.

To backup, replicate or mirror a repository is arguably one of the most important tasks working with Subversion. Of course a repository folder is completely self-contained and can be copied or ftped to a different location and read by svn without any problems as long as there is no writing or locking going on. Besides the simple copy there are several safer and more svn-specific options, three of which are discussed in this article. However, the suggested svnadmin hotcopy command like most svnadmin works only with paths, not URLs. So you have to enter (Windows):

C:\>svnadmin hotcopy c:\myrepos \\MYBACKUPSERVER\C\myrepos_bak

This technique works fine on your local network where you have path access as it’s fast and simple to use.

Since version 1.4 Subversion offers the svnsync utility which maintains read-only mirror of a subversion repository at a (remote) URL. It words by replaying revisions of the original (source/master) repository at a mirror (sink) repository.

The setup notes are meant for Unix machines and not easy to understand for newbies. Follow these steps to get it working on a Windows machine:

1. Set up a sync user on the destination repository by editing the passwd file in the conf directory of the target repository:
   [users]
   #harry = harryssecret
   #sally = sallyssecret
   mysvnsyncuser = mystrongpassword
2. This “syncuser” you created must be allowed to change revprops of the destination repository used by svnsync to keep track of bookkeeping information. Therefore a pre-revprop-change hook script has to be created. You will find an example script in the /hooks/pre-revprop-change.tmpl file of your target repository. However, this script is a Unix shell script and will not work under Windows. You will get the following error if you don’t have a script in the hooks folder that can be executed by Windows:

   svnsync: Repository has not been enabled to accept revision propchanges;
   ask the administrator to create a pre-revprop-change hook

   The simple solution is just to create a file named pre-revprop-change.bat containing the single line:
   @exit 0
   and save this file file in the /hooks directory of the target repository.

3. Then svnsync has to be initialized with the command:
   svnsync init svn://mytargetserver/mytargetrepository svn://mysourceserver/mysourcerepository
   (you can use any other URL such as file:, http:, svn+ssh:)
   You will be prompted for the username and password you created for the mysvnsycuser above.
   If all went well you will get the response:
   Copied properties for revision 0
4. You can now sync with the command:
   svnsync sync svn://mytargetserver/mytargetrepository
   and all revisions to your source repository will be replayed to the destination repository.
5. In Windows you could set up a Scheduled Task to sync from time to time which is beyond the scope of this article.
6. Don’t forget: NEVER commit to a synced repository without “svnsync” or you’ll get the “have you committed to the destination without using svnsync?” error and you’ll have to start over with the above process.

Hope it helps.

SUPER is a GUI to ffmpeg, mencoder, mplayer, x264, ffmpeg2theora & the theora/vorbis RealProducer plugIn.

If you need a simple, yet very efficient tool to convert (encode) or play any Multimedia file, without reading manuals or spending long hours training, then SUPER is all you need. It is a Multimedia Encoder and a Multimedia Player, easy-to-use with 1 simple click.

Trying to download this useful app from their web site at http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html is a waste of time as the browser will keep looping back to the same page and you will not get to any actual download link or file. They have some pseudo-fixes posted such as  ”clear your MSIE cache” but this is bs as the problems happen with all browsers and configurations. “Queries concerning this issue will not be answered.”, duh! I suspect that the loopback wants to let you sift through the page more thoroughly on the lookout for a download link, hoping you will click on some ad links along the way. IMHO this borders on spam and wastes people’s time, so to save some just download the app from AfterDawn. Most other download sites will link to the product’s endlessly cheating repeating home page. Hope it helps.

And here’s another hack to enable the GPS settings applet on Windows Mobile 5. I’m still using the PHM registry editor to edit the registry, but this classic program is not really working well on Windows Mobile 5. There might be better Compact Framework based tools today, such as this one. Anyway, it’s ironic that Microsoft just delivered serial port programmability with the Compact Framework 2.0 (System.IO.Ports namespace), and at the same time provided the serial-port-less GPSID programming interface of the gpsapi.dll, luring developers from the more generic serial GPS interfaces towards easy-to-use vendor lock-in, and dealing Windows Mobile 2003 another blow.