Javability (Java, Zaurus, Linux, Live)

31.1.05 15:01 Vnc2swf (

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Some people out there (1, 2) have discovered vnc2swf to make demo videos of their favorite applications/tools/development.

This is a good idea, and I hope many people will join them and make small videos about things they like on their PC.

Nice: last version support adding audio files to your recorded swf file. So you can record your desktop, then play it back and record your voice description, and finally merge both files.

Read also Flash video screen captures with vnc2swf

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14:14 Sölden (

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Back from ski weekend in Sölden/Austria. It was my first winter mountain trip since 10 years. Once again we had a lot of fun, didn't sleep much and made party the whole day (starting 8 o'clock in the morning until 5 o'clock, in the morning again :-) ). Apres ski is mostly too loud (150 beats/min techno at 1600 :-( ), but fun.

I don't do skiing myself, but the other guy's say that the area is nice for skiing.

I can recommend our apartment (Royal Sölden), even if it is a little bit outside, expensive and they have a too-much-mutimedia-homepage, but on the other side rooms are large, have a whirlpool and it's quietly (specially when you only sleep 3 hours a day it's important that those 3 hours are good sleep).

Here is a picture from Gaislachkogl at 3058 m (see also live webcam)

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26.1.05 22:28 Word of the day: Baphomet (

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Word of the day: Baphomet
A Baphomet is an idol or image. Variously, it has been described as: an idol with a human skull, a head with two faces, a cat idol and a bearded head.
During the suppression of the Knights Templar it was claimed by the Inquisition that the knights used a Baphomet as part of their initiation ceremonies. This, among other assertions, sealed their Order as heretical.
Source: Wikipedia

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24.1.05 18:21 XML - The Devil's Dictionary (

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XML Definition: A magic elixir of legend, claiming to solve all problems while inevitably exacting an ironic cost. “Once we drink the XML and take care of a few minor things — parser, DTD, entification, well-formed-ness, validation, namespaces, I18N, XSL transformations, schemas — all will be peaceful in the kingdom!”
Found in The Devils Dictionary
:-D

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22.1.05 10:02 Java on PocketPC FAQ (

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Read Java on PocketPC FAQ.

It answers many questions: available JVM's (IBM J9 (only 5$) or NISCOM Creme JVM), which user interface (AWT, Swing, SWT (see also here and here)), available databases (IBM cloudscape is free) and some books.
See also Java Support on Pocket PC (may be outdated, last update 20/6/03).

The FAQ is not actual regarding the following JVMs:

Ewe seems still be alive. Download here. Ewe is not really a JVM. It is a Java bytecode interpreter, but only supports a small number of Java features.
Also it doesn't implement the whole library, but bring it own library (Gui, collections, zip, registry access, infra-red, desktop synchronization, database API). Still your Ewe applications will run with a standard JVM if you add the Ewe library to your classpath. See Ewe PocketPC screenshots.
SuperWaba (Wiki) seems to be bought by a Brazilian company. Since 5.0 the license has changed: it's still open source and GPL for community edition (no charge). The professional package (with annual subscription of 495$) is under LGPL.
SuperWaba includes many additional API's such as variable screen resolution, serial/IR, Bluetooth, game API, native library. A huge range of additional controls, methods, applications, tools and development environments are available from here

As I bought a GPS PocketPC PDA few weeks ago I think I will try all of them soon and send you a feedback.

SWT for Pocket PC snippets

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20.1.05 22:15 Academy of Analytical Irrelevance (

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I think i finally found the institution I would like to study and work: Academy of Analytical Irrelevance. Now I hesitate between the four interesting courses they offer. Probably I will go for Tetrapyloctomy (The art of splitting hairs four ways) to learn the basics and then do Adynata (empirical impossibilities) because it seems to be to be very funny.

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22:12 Word of the day: Goi (

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Goy is a hebrew word for "nation" or "people" and is used in the hebrew bible for non-Israelite nations. Nowadays it generally means "non-Jew". See wikipedia

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19.1.05 21:46 Alpha centauri and which video stream do you watch? (

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Since several months I'm watching the Alpha centauri channel. This is a collection of scientific reports broadcasted by German public television Bayerischer Rundfunk. All videos are available online and the range goes from the beginning of our universe to current physical questions (Planck constant, Quarks, black holes...).
The moderator, Dr. Harald Lesch, is professor for theoretical astrophysics at the Universität München and you can feel how fascinate he is by his work.

What video streams do you watch?

Here is my personal list:

Alpha centauri
Tagesschau - German news from ARD - first German public television (see video buttons on the left side)
N-TV - another German news channel. It includes live broadcast from German Bundestag.
La 2 - French television company. News are available online
SUN Tech Days presentations

You can find many more online streams on wwiTV.

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21:35 Word of the day: Tesseract (

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Tesseract: a tesseract is a 'cube in 4 dimensions'. This means that the position of each point of the 'cube' is represented by four values. The tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square.". More information as usual in Wikipedia

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18.1.05 10:03 31 (

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So today is my birthday. I will spend my day doing things that I like:

Read: Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum
Cook: I love too cook, specially Asian food
Sport: got muscle cramps yesterday during soccer, so little bit running will be healthy

Things that marked my mostly last year:

Travels: I never traveled as much as last year, and each country and its people were a great experience: Australia, Portugal (with Sylvain), Mauritania, Italy (with Maike), France/Ile d'Oleron (with Kirsten) ... and many small trips
Java: still fascinated by the increasing amount of nice open source project: jsmsengine, jetty, jcapi, jmimemagic, lucene, jpcap ...
OpenEmbedded: I don't do anything here, still I'm fascinated by the work those guys are doing. And it helps me a lot to understand Linux internals and package dependencies
RSS: rss really change your live. You don't have to browse any more the web for information, instead it is delivered to you. And kmail rss integration is great
Blogging: for me it i just writting down my ideas and impressions. Writing things down helps me to better organize my ideas, and to find them again in case someone ask me about them.
Books: top 3 books I've read: Helmut Schmidt: Die Mächte der Zukunft, Francois Lelord: Hectors Reise, Robert Simmons: Hardcore Java. My current book (Eco, see above) would probably also be in this top three, but I didn't finish it yet, so it will probably be on the next year list).

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17.1.05 01:23 Word of the day: Golem and Kabbala (

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I thought it would be fun to publish from time to time words which are new to me and I'm discovering myself.

Golem: "A golem (sometimes pronounced Goilem), in medieval folklore and from Jewish mythology is an animated being crafted from inanimate material. The name appears to derive from the word gelem, which means 'raw material'." (source wikipedia).

Kabbala: ""Kabbalah" is an esoteric doctrine concerning God and the universe, asserted to have come down as a revelation to elect saints from a remote past, and preserved only by a privileged few. Kabbalah is part of the Jewish Oral Law. It is the traditional mystical understanding of the Torah. Kabbalah stresses the reasons and understanding of the commandments, and the cause of events described in the Torah. Kabbalah includes the understanding of the spiritual spheres in creation, and the rules and ways by which God administers the existence of the universe." (Source Wikpedia)

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16.1.05 13:34 Kdenlive and Piave installation on Suse 9.2 (

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I continue to search a good open source video editing tool for Linux (Kino is my preferred one, but maybe there are some other. I will blog about kino soon. I don't like cinelerra so far) which captures my DV videos from my new Sony HC18, allows me to cut videos and export them SVCD, DVD or MPEG.

While trying to install kdenlive (and piave) I did encounter some problems.

First you need all required libraries. I've installed the following (thanks god for apt-get): slang-devel, SDL-devel, libavc1394-dev, libraw1394-devel.

With this, dkenlive compiles (./configure --prefix=/opt/kde3, make, make install) correctly.
Piave is more difficult. I got the following errors:

> avccontroller.hh:50:26: libdv/dv1394.h: No such file or directory
> ...

Checking the source code, I replaced in
- piave-0.2.4/libpiave/avccontroller.hh
- piave-0.2.4/libpiave/IEEE1394IO.hh
the line
#include <libdv/dv1394.h>
with the line
#include <libdv/dv.h>

Now piave compiles and kdenlive works (still it doesn't have all features I would like).

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14.1.05 20:18 WLAN TV Video Streaming on Laptop with DBox, jgrabber and mplayer (

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Finally I can watch television on my laptop at home over wlan. This article describes my infrastructure.

I use the following components:
- DBox: this is a TV receiver sold in Germany together since several years by Pay-TV provider Premiere. Even if it is very old (66 MHz power PC if I remember well), it has some very nice features. First it has an Ethernet adapter, allowing to connect it to a network. Second: since several years, people have ported Linux on it and it works very well (much faster than original software, many features). The image I use is called Neutrino.
- a Windows Laptop, but all the following works very well too with Linux (tested on my home PC), connected via WLAN to your home network
- Jack the JGrabber: it is an application which allows remote control of a Linux DBox. It includes the following features: 1) Channel overview (incl. search, EPG), 2) Live playback, 3) instant and timer recording, 4) streaming of video signal in network ...
- MPlayer: movie player which plays all kind of streams/codecs, including DVB transport stream. You can also use VideoLAN client, or, on Linux, xine.

Here is the short recipe:
- connect your DBox with Ethernet to your home network. Give your DBox an IP address
- Install JtJG on your laptop (extract) and start it. Start JtJG and set the DBox IP address
- configure the player you want to use for playback (mplayer)
- go in the channel overview, select the channel and start playback
That's it.