Simon Rumble’s blog

Yeah yeah I've ranted about this before.

For the search engines, here's how I managed to get the OPL3-SA3 chip on my Dell Dimension XPS D266 going. This is the sound chip on my motherboard. Works nicely now!

I just started having trouble moving my excellent trackball. Pretty funny because when I pulled the ball out there was so much gumpf around the bearings it rolls on that the ball was having trouble moving. Yet still no tracking problems. Ahhh optical!

I bought this mouse thingy because I was having problems with my wrists. This along with those Microsnot split keyboards have really helped.

Well after a break of nearly two years, it's time for me to start a blog again. I've been putting it off for so damn long so finally I've got around to doing it.

I'm using Blosxom (pronounced "blossom") which uses plain text files, is free, does RSS feeds and sits in just one Perl script. Fantastic piece of software. I did find one little bug, but being Perl and free I just fixed it.

I've migrated some of my old blog entries from when I used Blogger. Yes you johnny-blog-latelies, I had a blog well over two years ago. Read 'em and weep.

So if you've got too much time on your hands, come back often and read my ramblings.

It seems incredible that a company can make so many of the same mistakes, over and over again. A topical example is the I LOVE YOU virus. This isn't a new idea, in fact the same thing happened a few years ago with MS Mail. That's right, a virus that grabbed all the addresses from MS Mail and mailed itself to everyone in your addressbook happened long before Outlook was released.

Another example is the braindead implementation of Windows NT and MS Exchange. Here is an organisation that built a Unix operating system years ago, so why are they making the same design mistakes made by Unix hackers in the 70s?

So why does Microsoft keep remaking mistakes? My theory is the organisation has a built-in memory loss mechanism.

Imagine yourself a programmer working for Microsoft in 1984. You get a few thousand options in the company every few months. These options at least double in value every year. Four years later, it's 1988 and your options vest. You cash out and go to live in a mansion in the Greek Islands and never think about computers again.

This cycle is repeated endlessly as the Microsoft wealth generation engine has continued. The result: nobody technical in Microsoft sticks around longer than 4 years or so. This means memory within the organisation lasts only a few years. From there, the newly recruited programmers know nothing more than Microsoft's latest products.

Those of you who've heard me rant will know that I think Internet radio is a stupid idea. The reason I like this is that they tend to play my kinda music. The reason I think Internet radio is so silly an idea is proven through this. Judging by the number of people in the chatroom of Dublab, I'm one of very few people actually tuning in.

The future of online audio isn't someone else selecting music for you... The person who managed to convince the record companies of this will make a lot of money.

So here I am, using someone else's code. Seems pretty cool though, this Blogger thing. Easier, anyway :)

Version 1.1 4th November, 2002

Getting audio in sync with the dxr3 card can difficult. The problem is that the video decoding can take a different amount of time than outputting the audio.

To start with, you need to understand how the dxr3 works with mplayer and xine. For MPEG 1 and 2 format video, the MPEG video data is sent directly to the dxr3 card and decoded in hardware. For other formats of video, the video stream is decoded and then re-encoded as MPEG and sent to the card. This means for different types of video you will get different delays in processing so the audio might run more or less ahead of the video.

For this reason you may need to try different methods for different video codec types and formats.

GENERAL

Here are some things to try to get your audio just right so that it doesn't seem like you're watching a badly dubbed kung-fu movie.

• Make sure you're using the latest combination of dxr3 drivers and video player (xine or mplayer) as constant improvements are being made.
• Check that it's not the video file itself. Many divx and other files found on the net can have poor sync internally. Make sure you're working with good sources. Try playing it to your computer screen (not through the dxr3) and see if that is in sync.
• Try all the different audio drivers. I particularly find that the SDL driver can work better, which is odd but works. In mplayer: mplayer -ao
• If you're using your computer's sound card, try using the dxr3 card's audio output instead. In mplayer: mplayer -ao oss:/dev/em8300_ma-0 (replace "0" with the number of dxr3 card you want to use.)
• If you're running some audio server like artsd (KDE) or esd (Gnome), try playing without that and talking directly to the sound hardware instead.
• Your machine might have trouble keeping up, particularly playing non-MPEG video such as divx. Try: In mplayer: mplayer -framedrop
• Newer versions of MPlayer have some special options for sync with the dxr3. Try this for anything other than mpeg: In mplayer: mplayer -vo dxr3:prebuf:sync -vop lavc=1:29.97

  And for standard mpeg 1 or 2 (including DVDs): -vo dxr3:prebuf:sync

• Experiment with delays on the audio. You should work with something very dialogue-based to test this. An episode of the West Wing works well. Again, make sure you're using a good video file. In mplayer: mplayer -delay (delay can be a floating point value)

AVI FILES

Some AVI files have peculiar problems with audio sync which can be helped with the following options.

Use a non-interleaved AVI parser. Normally, audio and video are interleaved in the avi file, so you can read the file sequentially. For some broken avis, however, you need to read the audio and video stream separately. If you use this option and the file is badly interleaved, playing directly from a cd might be impossible, because your drive has to jump around a lot. In these cases, you have to copy the file to your harddisk first.
In mplayer: mplayer -ni

• Some AVI files have broken headers and this can be fixed.
  mplayer -nobps
• The audio can get seriously out of whack and to get it back in sync may require a more extreme correction than the default. Setting the maximum correction to something like three seconds works well.
  mplayer -mc
• Finally, there are many, especially older avis out there (> 1.5 years) that have really fucked up a/v sync and even don't play right under Windows. If you get in contact with such a file, there's little you can do but look for a better copy.

Maintained by Simon Rumble

Thanks for the input from Michael Hunold.

Many years ago, my mate Martin introduced me to a Japanese tea style called Hojicha. It's made by roasting the leaves and twigs of the tea plant. The roasting gives it a distinctly nutty flavour, and removes most of the caffeine.

My friend Yasuyo from Tokyo stayed with us last week. She brought over a big bag of Hojicha for me. Yum! According to her, it's one of the cheaper teas and it's rude to serve it to a guest due to its cheapness. This one, apparently, is the most expensive one in her local tea shop. It's delicious!

If you know me, you probably know I like my coffee. These days, I drink one cup of coffee at home in the mornings (stove-top espresso using fairly traded beans

I've long harboured an interest in breadmaking. I eat a lot of the stuff and really appreciate the good stuff. When an old flatmate had a bread maker, I was very very happy. I'd always vaguely considered baking my own, but it always seemed like it would be really hard.

Well last week, thanks to the Nigella book Julie gave me (yes, the Domestic Goddess one -- that must be me), I made my first loaf. It was surprisingly easy and the results were delicious! I've since made a couple of more batches and it's really fun.

Mabye I'm a bit weird, but I do enjoy cooking and bread seems much less difficult to make and experiment with than I initially thought. The kneading by hand part isn't anywhere near as taxing as I thought. Ten minutes of actually quite therapeutic kneading and that's pretty much it. The only hard part is waiting for the dough to rise, which limits the times I can make it.

So now, as soon as I get hold of the ingredients, I'm going to try making some multigrain breads and the like. I think I might need a book just on bread making, particularly with regard to shaping.

One thing I'd like to try to make is sourdough. However I'd be a bit worried having lactic acid-generating bacteria in the house. Could end up contaminating my beer brewing, and I could do without a lactic acid sour beer...

Oh, and Julie, I guess I owe you a loaf of bread. I did say I'd make you something out of the book when you gave it to me.

Recently I've noticed a few guides to the fish you can sustainably eat coming out. There was one for the East coast of Australia recently, though I can't remember the link. This one covers the West coast of the US (via Boing Boing Blog).

Does anyone know of one for those of us eating fish in Europe? Probably be hard to pull together since nearly all fish here is frozen and comes from all over. There seems to be loads of Carribean fish, even. Obviously we must avoid cod, though it may be too late already for them.

One thing I have sworn off recently is scallops. The process of dredging for wild scallops completely destroys the sea floor environment. The farmed variety, like most seafood farming, has major problems with pollution, not to mention the nasty contaminants in the finished product.

It's a tough time to be someone who wants to eat more fish. But there are some things you can do.

Update: Just found this article from The Guardian which seems to supply the info I'm after.