Chrome OS vs Windows ?

Last time I read a computer magazine (I rarely read them), most headline was musing around chrome os. What the heck? All I know about chrome is it's a chromium based browser, and if there is an OS born , it must be web/browser based. Yet the buzz is louder than before, that keep me thinking if Chrome OS was really a brand-new OS. Man thats blazing fast! if that's true

After read here, OK I'm wrong but still IMO it looks less than what Apple have done with their first Mac OS X. The difference is that OSX use (more secure) FreeBSD while Chrome OS use Linux. Oh and Apple still do lot more work on GUI. But of course, Chrome OS could make better Window Manager than currently Linux has.

OpenSource matter
Fine. Count me on it, but more or less could we get only the window manager and newly-ported chromium browser as paskage? and install it on dozen of different Linux distro that optimized for speed and older hardware? Now is that the buzz of the new OS?

Comparing it with Windows
Cloud computing is a different story than desktop computing (Yes, It's still alive, kicking and unreplaceable in many case) and I'm sure M$ or other browser/desktop apps vendor has their own answer for cloud. But replacing Windows with Chrome OS is major buzz that hyperventilating. No no, again the answer is not came from Google but from heavy desktop apps vendor like Adobe, Autodesk etc. Unless Google make SketchUp for Linux (have they even do their own homework? Jeez), Autodesk port Max & AutoCAD, Adobe take more serious on Flex and so on, IMO it's an ignorant buzz. It just similar to Linux++ vs Windows

Yeah, thats my point of view as heavy desktop-computing user.
Afterall broadband connection isn't happy with 3rd world, even my gmail get choked frequently on ajax mode.

I'm still see Open Source VS Proprietary in desktop apps as bigger influence to the whole world rather than this loud buzz.
But still, I love chromium browser as I love k-meleon very much :)

More about GIMP environment and portability

In a packager view, current Gimp installer has interesting drawback of its installation method. That is installer put two absolute path during setup:
default.env : Path=C:\Program Files\Gimp-2.0\bin
pygimp.interp : python=c:\python25\pythonw.exe

So why static absolute path is bad? Because nothing can't automatically fix/update it when gimp folder moved (unless you reinstall it of course).. and will render all plugins unusable which also meaning make file association harder. Moved? Yes this post lead to portable thingy. Which currently put my combo gimpscape installer in pending state >,<

Note that "program files" might be taken from %PROGRAMFILES% of system variable. In most case, modern windows application heavily rely path configuration to registry -said, it's faster to initiliaze- but we know that OSS programs especially those ported from linux didn't rely on registry by default.

Make your own PDF from FLOSS Manuals

Yesterday I search for Inkscape documentation that match for 0.47 version from http://en.flossmanuals.net/Inkscape/. However their generated PDF is lack of images and quite old, so I decided to made my own. The tool that I use is OpenOffice Writer, yup that's should be enough.

1. From that link click on Print All button in the topleft menu. This will bring you complete content in single page.
2. Lauch OO Writer, copy the webpage and paste it on Writer.
3.Now you are ready to Export as PDF, but I need to do workaround a little to make PDF bookmarked correctly. Press F11 and modify heading 1 paragraph style to match this screenshot below:

Download always stopped at exact bytes position

Have you ever experience your download was stopped at exactly same byte position and won't proceeded? It happen to me lately and the cause is remain unknown.

My attempts to resume download include:
- Use download manager and ftp manager
- Try with Opera 10 and all other major browser
- Restarting Windows
- Re-connect dial-up internet
- Switch to linux and re-download
- Use mirror sites to resume
- Re-plug Modem
- Re-insert SIM card
- Waiting untill monthly renewal subscribe
- Use multipart mode in download manager

Combo Gimp and Inkscape Silent Installer

Last weekend I begin compiling Inkscape 0.47 as an alternative to the officials release. Knowing my habit of optimizing for small code, I use the general mingw -TDM sjlj- to build inkscape, later I also build GIMP 2.6.7 too. So now both have uniformly same dependencies. While there is no obvious advantages of doing uniform build, it bring a more closer look of linux counterpart build environment where dependencies should be compatible to each other to application require it.

During MinGW compilation, packages are optimized for Core2 Processor (mmx, sse, sse2, sse3)

Then I merged my little work months ago in this post and add some little more.

PyWebkitGTK Windows Binary

Python armed with webkitgtk? pywebkitgtk
See the demo:

This tabbed browser use 15KB of python code. Small eh?
But as you see we might need to impersonate the userAgent string into something like Safari (also using webkit) to shut facebook up... lol

Personally I didn't like its performance, it's nothing compared to safari (original implementator) not to mention Chrome! But talk about integration, WebkitGTK probably a bit ahead of QTWebkit by using Gstreamer (for multimedia backend) which I think still better than QT's phonon in Windows.

When both binded, HTML 5 will be a snap rather than what Opera 10 tries to do with their own way..

Homepath oddity for win32 ported linux apps

Probably this is not important but if nobody started to loathing, its probably too late. Homepath in windows refer to root directory for lot of user's personal setting folders in which %appdata% aka application data folder exist.

Now there is only few OSS application that understand this correct convention. Pidgin and Inkscape are good example while the rest simply ignore this and filling homepath (C:\Documents And Settings\%user%) with dozen bizzare .%appname folder. That's bother me

Msi installer will bombardier your registry

MSI installer has important benefit over standard .exe setup files.
taken from http://repository.windowsdream.com/updater/why_msi.html

* You are sure to find an entry on Add/Remove programs, in the Control Panel.
* What has been installed will be uninstalled, and only this. This means that if the MSI created a C:\MyDir\ folder, copied a Myfile.exe inside, and if afterwards you added a C:\MyDir\Myconfig.ini file, at the uninstall process, everything will disappear, except the Myconfig.ini file. This is clean.
* The install/uninstall process is even more clever. It makes use of a counter. So, if a registry key is used by 4 applications, and you uninstall 3 of them, then the registry key will remain... until you uninstall the 4th application.
* There's a repair mode, which operates automatically in case one key file has been deleted.
* Shared ini files are never overwritten. Instead, they are read, and appended or modified. When uninstalling, the ini files are restored to what they were before the installation of the MSI.
* No DLL conflict to fear.
* Upgrades from a version to a newer one can be done easily.
* And many more similar features.

But if you ever track down an installation process using MSI, in most case you will know that list of files that need to be uninstalled later and other huge redundant file information are stored inside registry.

Just imagine if a package contain 1200 files and then you stored it in deep/long directory name (like C:\Program files\The Registry Killer Company\Let me fill the registry Apps\) and also if inside that folder installer put 5-level directory, I'm pretty sure it will add some megabytes to registry...
Now make it 5 installation of such, and how much megabytes wasted for that? Why don't relocate it to log files?


And you know the rest what to be happened if registry is too big.

Finding files with FTP search engine

Many ftp sites, especially that have anonymous access rarely being indexed by google. It's kind of old fashioned mode of filesharing which have minimal role for commercial purpose. A true direct mode... not the waiting link (cough.. direct link..) we seen today, says rapidshit and friends

Recently I find ftp search engine that still survived: http://proisk.ru (other is gegereka.com), a slow but extensive (probably excessive) ftp search engine. This is really great deal alternative that offer direct as well as parallel and resumable download. The sites itself is not compatible with Opera or at least I found its best for Firefox.

Put x264 and Vorbis in sync (VirtualDub)

Among audiophiles, vorbis is the best choice for midrange to very low bitrates format for lossy audio compression. Beside its opensource, what could be better than that. AAC which is later came with giant corporate support (noticeable Apple) have quickly embraced more widely than vorbis. Without become audio professional you will barely notice that at very low bitrates, ogg vorbis was unbeatable in fidelity.

This fame however not equally accepted by video enthusiast. Though the standart has periodically shift toward x264 (an Open Source implementation of H264) and leaving xvid/divx (H263 family) in the dust. The choice for audio was still held by trashy mp3/mp2, thanks for its MPEG video legacy. But why not x264+Vorbis?

I have an anime movies to give it a try and I use VirtualDub here instead of Mediacoder. Before telling you why not mediacoder, I want to tell the quirks of VirtualDub. One of VirtualDub main forte is it act as video capture tool at very beginning. I have use it extensively with my poor webcam to enhance the image quality by utilised VirtualDub's excellent real-time noise reduction. Lucky enough both best video and audio compression is available in VfW and ACM though vorbis version is very outdated. Now this VfW architecture is VirtualDub's quirks as a technology that has no future at least for non-real-time processing. VirtualDub could optionaly use directShow filter too... yeah remind me the era of ffdshow's chaos yikes.

Now, I could say that I don't even care what the A/V format is as long as it played on MPlayer and probably in my DVD player box.

Why not mediacoder then? because: it can't mux any video format with vorbis correctly. I tired of finding the right encoder/decoder/muxer combination. The symptom might not obvious at first but its there. The produced video may look no good even at first sight as audio will mostly delayed, so it should be fixed by put negative delay on the audio right? No. The video will ooks insync but if you keep watch carefully just about few minutes you may notice that audio is gradually loose sync then fluctuated sometime it get insync again. This is bad as crap when there is a delayed dialog and the character has already changed to other char. So this is clearly not a proportional delayed audio.

Back to VirtualDub, in Audio>Compression menu you may see vorbis (if installed) has some modes:
mode1: Original stream compatible
mode2: Have independent header
mode3: Have no codebook header
mode*+: pseudo CBR

AFAIK vorbis is known for using quality-mode at default, but there is VBR too. So what is pseudo CBR? No matter, Mode1+ is the one you should choose and you probably need to resample the audio too (just get it reinitialized in case of mp3 format). Mode2 or 3 generally will render unplayable video stream. And quality based will result fluctuated delayed audio thus mplayer was unable to seek (forward rewind) the video. If after encoding with mode1+ it still out of sync, apply delay effect on it.

As for my encoding task, a HD resolution anime movie is enough with 400kbps x264(multipass) and 64kbps (minimum) Vorbis. Although 32kbps aoTuV still sound kind of convincing for dialogs.

note: I tested on VirtualDub 1.8 and 1.9