Well, today I wasn't encoding Malcolm in the Middle episodes into mpeg2 (which is taking about 16hours per 22min clip, due to my logo scrubber (removes wintv's logo) and various deinterlace filters, the result is very nice quality at 704x576) so I decided to try out some linux video programs that I downloaded about a week ago.

The short and sweet part is, I can now play DVD's off the disk without decss'ing them first, I can play mpeg's, mpeg2's, DVD's, VCD's, SVCD's, Divx files and other goodness all under linux without dropping a noticable amount of frames. The program is xine. I was going to try avi-xmms again, but need to upgrade xmms to 1.2.3 or greater (hmmm I've got 1.2.2 bugger) and I haven't been able to find the files for it I downloaded.

Stephen Eaton has a linux user group meeting tonight that I'm going to check out.

Not much else to say, encoding mpeg2's really takes it out of you. I'm back at Uni again, last year.

After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network -The Onion

Well, I forgot to post in my last post my results with my adventure into DirectX support under linux. I was able to get 3dmark2000 to run in Linux (using wine and the transgaming patches). Of course, once I got the freshly installed Redhat 7 install (and 330meg of updates) applied (rpm -Fvh at it's best), the newest 2.4.1 kernel (less than 10 days old at the time) going. I then used the Nvidia 0.9-5 drivers with a patch from linuxgaming.com (I think it was from there). It worked ok with that, but once I tried to load the second OpenGL program X (in this case XFree86 4.0.1) decided to hang on me... So I took the risk, and downloaded the Nvidia 0.9-6 drivers and so far so good. I got 3dmark 2000 to run, but it crashed enlightenment on the 32meg texture rendering test. So I replaced E with the latest ice and X is so much faster ... but I'm yet to try 3dmark2000 again. Quake3 runs better in linux with multi processor mode and the newer drivers than it does in windows (where it is not stable in multi processor mode)...

My next adventure into linux will be Video4Linux support of the Miro DC30 !! The module inserted ok, but the device still wasn't functioning ... I will get it to work ... it's just a matter of time.

My distro is improving quite dramatically, I'm recoding my php port of smoothwall's dialler CGI's (they were in perl, another long story) to use wvdial which is a program that thinks like I do, plus it was able to pluck a working init string out of thin air that works half decent with my modem. Check this out:

CONNECT 115200
--> Carrier detected.  Waiting for prompt.
******************************************************
iiNet Limited
UnAuthorised Access Prohibited
******************************************************
User Access Verification
login:
--> Looks like a login prompt.
--> Sending: username
username
Password:
--> Looks like a password prompt.
--> Sending: (password)
techno-01>
--> Hmm... a prompt.  Sending "ppp".
ppp
Entering PPP mode.
Async interface address is unnumbered (FastEthernet0)
Your IP address is 203.59.107.43. MTU is 1500 bytes
--> Looks like a welcome message.
--> Starting pppd at Sat Feb 10 13:18:16 2001

Hmm... a prompt. That's how I think =)

You think you had it bad before, Lister? Well now you've got it in stereo, baby.

Lot's has happened ...

I've written several short articles:

• My Shitlist or My rant about spam
• Paid to Surf Guide (I moved this into articles and updated it)
• Assignment - Hack - Aftermath
• Upgrading SIPS 0.3.0beta1 to SIPS 0.3.0pl1 Other news, Garbs was right, Alladvantage has gone belly up, well according to their page they have, the bastards ... they owe me $29 AUD ...

I've upgraded the code behind this site (SIPS) to the latest version, which has included several of my bug fixes and fixed other bugs in the code. No new features yet.

I've changed the header of the site to include the articles link and removed the stale links there (the ones that have moved to articles will stay there). Soon (once I've coded it) I'll put up the link to the code section, of course this will mean that I'll have to finish my (for the time being) Nameless Traffic Grapher. It needs a bit of work still, a setup script is one, but I just haven't been motivated enough to finish it lately.

My smoothwall - startuplinux sorta based linux distro is making lots of progress. It BOOTS !!!, it mounts its file systems, it loads its network modules and gets DHCP served IP address, it slices, it dices, it doesn't have any firewall rules ATM, but thats coming. Right now, its 40meg of RPM's and it installs to 104meg of disk space, but I'm yet to prune out the crap (ummm well unneeded stuff). Hopefully halving it's size. When it's done, bluemidgit will be reinstalled with it. (Bluemidgit's been up for 134 days now ...) The install program is going to bite big winkie in the first release, but you get that. Once I've got it working, I'll hack up the redhat installer much like smoothwall has I guess.

I've been really busy lately, I've just had a haircut, uni starts in 1.5 weeks time.

If you don't have a butter knife in your toolkit, you are not a real hardcore hardware hax0r.

Just lately it has been pretty hard to ignore the fact that there is a pending state election here in Western Australia. And being my first time to vote in a state election I thought I would write to all political parties asking for their policy documents so I could have a read, well that was 3 weeks ago and I stil have only recieved one little booklet from one party. I guess the parties don't really care about the little first time voter here. So today, as I sit here compiling Linux 2.4.1 with USB support I decided to give the little book a bit of a browse... And low and behold there are some very interesting bits, two of which I will include in the read on section below. Note: I haven't specified which party I recieved this from, and I'm not going to. The other day on slashdot there was an interesting post about directX 7 support for wine, so that's what I'm investigating now. The current plan: Linux 2.4.1 XFree86 4.0.1 Nvidia 0.9-5 (2.4.0 patch) and Wine with the directx patch, I'll let you all know how it goes.

How come wrong numbers are never busy?

Here is a copy (read, word for word) of the passage's of interest from the policy book I recieved:

Social Welfare

This political party supports

1. the integration of the special Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affiars social welfare service schemes and funding with existing social services for all Australians, confirming our belief that the need for support is not confined to any particular section of our community. Poverty, despair and its resultant impacts affest all family types randomly and without discrimination.

Education and Training:

This political party supports

c. that educational opportunities and resources should be available on an equal basis to all Australian citizens. Any student requirements, such as financial assistance, will be judged with consideration of supply on the basis on of need, not race, as no section of the community has a monopoly on being disadvantaged.*

Interesting huh? What do you think? Try to guess which party it was. I bet you wouldn't even come close, unless you've read it yourself.