Joanna About this site

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The start page contains the most recent 15 articles.

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good :: pkd

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Copyright © 2003-2007 Alternate Worlds Publishing, Boston MA USA


powered by blosxom -- www.blosxom.com
Wenhua dageming de zhongyao jiaoxun shi bixu fandui geren mixin
If I have been able to see further, it is because I am surrounded by midgets.
Never ascribe to stupidity that which can adequately be explained by malice.
"Your argument's repugnant and intriguing." "That's kinda my thing."

Danny's Weblog

The "nolist" folder

For most of the file folders on this site, when I add a file, or update it, the file appears on the main page of the blog as a new posting. The "nolist" folder is different: the software will never add a new or updated file in this folder (or subfolders) to the main page. So I can use it for pages which I intend to repeatedly update, but are not thereby novel enough to be listed on the main page.
2007 Jan 16 [ Tue ]

My favorite external sites

About this site

News sites

Utilities

  • Check for trojans etc
  • Why run checks like the above?
  • Depressing general spyware info
  • Another browser security tester site
  • Many purportedly anti-spyware products themselves contain spyware Listing of suspect anti-spyware products
  • You can find out about some suspect sites here (if they are in the .com domain) Netsol whois
  • Sysinternals.com have many free and for-money utilities for Windows. Utilities for Windows
  • Another great utility from Sysinternals RootKitRevealer
  • Insecure.org gives away the excellent "nmap" utility for checking open (vulnerable) ports. It also has the following list of network attack/defence tools (including, for instance Sysinternals). Network tools
  • Securia has good listings on vulnerabilities for many products, eg IE: IE vulnerabilities
  • Matthew Skala – Molester
  • There are umpteen versions of Linux; compare them here: distrowatch.com
  • The "K-12 Linux" project: using Linux to provide services to schoolchildren. Check out this site if you are thinking of setting up an internet cafe. K-12 Linux
  • The K12 Linux site has a good page on setting up the client machines which discusses diskless workstations: Client setup
  • and it points to a site selling the NICs with the boot proms already installed: Disklessworkstations.com
  • eg Linksys 10/100
  • How to get random NICs to boot from the network
  • PXE is no longer pushed by Intel but seems to have mature support in hw and sw. Using PXE network booting under Linux
  • Linux Journal article on remote booting. Good overview (many other pages address only a fraction of the issues described here) Remote Linux explain ed
  • PXE booting under Knoppix: Knoppix.net
  • As an alternative to *remote* booting, you can keep multiple system images on a *local* drive, and reload workstations faster without stressing the network and server. Linux Journal 6608
  • Learn about WLAN principles using the Sangoma Wan Edukit. Linux Journal 6298
  • The link to Sangoma given in the above article does not work. Try this: Sangoma Edukit
  • The "m0n0wall" project – a Linux distro optimized for standalone router/firewalls in many configurations: m0n0wall
  • Does a scanner support Linux? Find out on the SANE project site: SANE mfrs support list
  • The Moodle Learning Management System LMS – a CMS for education. Follow the link for "resources" at the end for good links to more LMS info. Linux Journal 7478
  • You know how tough it is to get back to anything runnable when your hard drive gets scrambled? The "Ultimate Boot CD" (free) is loaded with disk and other utilities, including Maxtor and Western Digital proprietary software. The self-extracting .exe is just 73 MB. Download and burn it yourself. Ultimatebootcd.com
  • As an alternative to the Ultimate Boot CD above, try the Ultimate Windows Boot CD, which uses "Bart PE" to boot to Windows, so you can use GUI utilities. Full version(2.5) is: 62.9MB. You *also* need Bart PE. Ultimate Windows Boot CD
  • Bart PE itself (you need to run a script which pulls in Windows install files which you provide from a Windows CD; you also need the service pack; Bart PE now includes a "slipstream" utility which integrates the service pack into the original Windows CD, or you can use an already-slipstreamed Windows CD). File: pebuilder313.zip Size: 2.74MB: Bart PE
  • Modifying Knoppix to customize it for an "internet lounge". Covers similar points to those needed for an internet cafe – except for billing features. Linux Journal 8081
  • List of articles at Linux Journal. Some, like the above, are free; some require a subscription. Linux Journal article list
  • Microsoft Excel info, eg free calendaring system The Excel Nexus
  • Handy list of web utilities useful to users and site creators Kuro5hin posting
  • Free or very inexpensive Unix shell/web accounts freeshell.net
  • New version of Ubuntu – 5.10. Includes thin-client support. Ubuntu
  • Free font editor for Linux and Windows FontForge
  • Excellent intro to RSS standards: 0.91, 1.0, Atom, 2.0... Linux Journal 7670
  • Excellent article on serial boot consoles for Linux; Linux Journal 7206
  • Exceptionally clear display of the time in USA and territories. time.gov
  • Use free VMWare Player and the Browser Appliance for safe browsing vmware.com
  • Apple's Netboot service on OS X 10.4 has new System Image utility apple.com
  • Printed circuit board design using Linux Linux Journal – gEDA
  • Trinity Rescue Kit – Boot Linux, read your NT system files, automagically create an .iso image on your C: drive which contains your NT system files so you can then run *that* CD to read and write reliably to your NTFS volumes. Cool. Trinityhome.org
  • Need a timeserver? pool.ntp.org for your ntp client. pool.ntp.org
  • Damn small Linux ftp folder for apps ibiblio.org
  • Great, long list of Windows utils that run off USB (or CD): dirk-loss.de

Hardware vendors

  • PC Connection are not cheap, but they're easy to deal with and they have a solid range of stock. For instance, try searching for network test equipment. PC Connection
  • Tiger Direct are the *opposite* of PC Connection. They sell remaindered and "pre-sold" inventory often missing essential accessories, warranty cards, etc. On the other hand they often advertise interestingly quirky gizmos at low, low prices. Gamble. A wide range of motherboards, and one of the few places selling motherboard/cpu combos as well as "barebones". Tiger Direct
  • J & R Music and Computer World sells a wide range of tech toys including computer stuff, cameras, audio and video. They have a great paper catalog that I wish I could still get. J & R
  • Antec sells power supplies, plus a bunch of other things. One that caught my eye was this power supply tester: I've often wondered how much load I really need to provide a bare power supply for it to start up reliably. Antec ATXPSU test adapter
  • Need a special router without paying an arm and a leg to Cisco and without needing much power? This "Routerboard" has two Ethernet ports, serial, usb 1.1, Pentium MMX 266 architecture using a NSC SC1100 CPU, CompactFlash slot, PCMCIA slot, *and even a standard PCI slot*. 44-pin IDE connector for 2.5-in drive. routerboard.com
  • Need a special case for your mini router? This website specializes in prototype cases. Check out their mini-itx stuff, for instance: protocase.com
  • Need to distribute 12V? Like a power backup system in Phnom Penh? Amateur Radio (ARRL) power system
  • Great list of hardware and software vendors for hobbyists and experimenters ask.slashdot.org

Asia

Hobbies

Paranoia

My political views are probably considered paranoid by many, so let's call a spade a spade.

Miscellaneous

Cute blogs

Cambodia blogs

Sex

People search for sex on the internet so much that some of them actually arrive at my blog. But they really should try a site like this: Or click randomly around this page:

[Single-story view] [/nolist] [permanent link]
Responses: 1
Name/Blog: mythicaldude
URL: http://www.mythicaldude.typepad.com
Title: reciprocal link?
Comment/Excerpt: Hi, Nie blog! How about a reciprocal link? I've been linking to you for quite awhile. Thanks for your consideration.... Cheers, Mythicaldude http://www.mythicaldude.typepad.com [View/add responses]
2007 Jan 07 [ Sun ]

Articles by month

Click one of the months shown below to get all the articles for the selected month.

Incidentally, by manually typing in the URL, you can also use a date selection *after* a folder selection; for instance: My political opinions in 2005

2006 May 15 [ Mon ]

My PKD font is not embeddable yet

Although my PKD font is intended to be freely distributable, I did not set the flag appropriately when I created it. For a long time I was not sure how to do that, but recently I figured that out. Now I can make a .PDF file containing the fonts: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/pdfs/pkdtest01.pdf]

(I apologize for the incorrect Khmer in that PDF: it's just there as a reference for the PKD phonetic text version.)

However I am still getting a refusal from Microsoft's "WEFT" tool to create an auto-downloadable .eot file. It's strange: I have a very old version of the font which WEFT does not object to, so it can't be impossible – I just don't know which of the umpteen subsequent changes I made is what it's objecting to. I'm going to have to go through it one by one.

WEFT link: msdn.microsoft.com [http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/fontembed/font_embed.asp]

Once I've figured out the WEFT problem – or given up – I'll provid a new version of the PKD font with full embedability. There are a few other cleanups I'll add at the same time.

2006 Apr 03 [ Mon ]

Converting video files for/from Nokia phones

This info is just for me and may be specific to my Nokia model.

Basically, Nokias, and various other phones using the Symbian Series-60 operating system, store video in .3gp files. The video encoding inside these files is a flavor of MP4, but the audio encoding is .amr, which is poorly supported. The Ipod seems to support .3gp files.

I have just started to download these tools and cannot yet vouch for them. The only tool I *have* tried is the "ImTOO 3GP Video Converter": www.imtoo.com [http://www.imtoo.com/3gp-video-converter.html]

It's 29 USD. So far I have not paid up, just using the free download (quite small). The free download works very well but is limited to a 60-second output file.

I'm mildly interested in hacking the Nokia. There seems to be no useful Perl library to handle Nokia-specific features, but Python seems to be reasonably well supported. Nokia has free downloads for programmers including full devkits, although their main choice is C++ (yecch). I think if you download the devkit you get an emulator which can run Python, but I haven't tried that yet.

Nokia-specific

How to download the Nokia Multimedia Converter (hint: you have to register on their forum and be online during the install) (The link below, because of the periods, seems to display wrong if I let my software create a link for it. So it's not clickable; you'll need to cut-and-paste.) www.mobymemory.com/Content/HOWTO. Install.and.use.the.Nokia.Multimedia.Converter.2.0.593.html

Converter software for video on Nokia: www.xilisoft.com [http://www.xilisoft.com/3gp-video-converter/cell-phone-list.html]

Python for Nokia series 60. Has many other useful links: www.forum.nokia.com [http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/0,,034-821,00.html]

Intro to Python on Nokia Series 60: www.allaboutsymbian.com [http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/Nokia_Pythons_Flying_Circus.php]

Python for series 60 at SourceForge: opensource.nokia.com [http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/pythonfors60/]

Nokia programming tools page (includes SDKs): www.forum.nokia.com [http://www.forum.nokia.com/tools/]

Python tutorial for s60: www.mobilenin.com [http://www.mobilenin.com/pys60/menu.htm]

From sourceforge, current version of Python:

superb.dl.sourceforge.net [http://superb.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pys60/PythonForS60_2ndEd_1_3_1.SIS] superb.dl.sourceforge.net [http://superb.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pys60/PythonForS60_doc_1_3_1.pdf] superb.dl.sourceforge.net [http://superb.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pys60/PythonForS60_2ndEdFP2_1_3_1.SIS]

Useful library for series 60 Python: pdis.hiit.fi [http://pdis.hiit.fi/pdis/download/miso/]

General video software

The www.doom9.org site has a lot of good stuff. Unfortunately doesn't seem to have mobile-related stuff. Here is their list of software download links. (Click "show all" on one of the sections – it starts off only showing a fraction): www.doom9.org [http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/software.htm]

K-Lite codec pack (not just codecs but a bunch of utils, 19 MB): www.free-codecs.com [http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm] Some posters didn't trust it.

DVDFabDecrypter – free download – copies DVDs to HD with protections removed. Note that it is not the same as "DVDDecrypter", which was shut down by Macrovision: www.dvdidle.com [http://www.dvdidle.com/free.htm]

WinAP: tagger program to add tags for Itunes to video files. Needs dotnetfx.exe, MS's .NET Framework (22.4 MB): www.abstractvoid.com [http://www.abstractvoid.com/]

Very nice info on using DVDDecrypter and Folder2ISO. Hopefully should also work with "DVDFabDecrypter": www.afterdawn.com [http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/burn_dvd_folder_dvd_decrypter.cfm]

Folder2ISO: www.afterdawn.com [http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd_tools/folder2iso.cfm]

DVDSUBEDIT – fast editor of subtitles in .VOB files. Reposition or resync them. Can run an external OCR to get text from video. Free. www.videohelp.com [http://www.videohelp.com/~DVDSubEdit/]

3gp conversion – utilities and info

Producing 3gp under Linux with mplayer: julian.coccia.com [http://julian.coccia.com/blog/index.php?m=200409&more=1]

3gp to .AVI using Quicktime Pro home.planet.nl [http://home.planet.nl/~huizi468/3gp_to_avi.html]

Producing .3gp with mostly free tools in Windows: www.sprintusers.com [http://www.sprintusers.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-71413.html]

Catra Streaming Platform for .3gp etc: www.catrasoftware.it [http://www.catrasoftware.it/Streaming/CatraStreamingPlatform.htm]

ffmpeg – command-line tool; uses same library (libavcodec) as vlc: ffmpeg.sourceforge.net [http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/index.php] en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFmpeg] Large manual page. Has lots of details on various formats: ffmpeg.sourceforge.net [http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/ffmpeg-doc.html] Incidentally, the page above does not list 3gp. My understanding is that 3gp uses MP4 video compression, but AMR audio, which ffmpeg needs an external library for.

Videohelp.com's list of video utils for mobile phones: www.videohelp.com [http://www.videohelp.com/tools?s=36#36] In general, videohelp.com has excellent info and links.

"Super" video converter. GUI to the libavcodec. www.erightsoft.com [http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html]

Vemode is a free prog to convert videos and movies into portable formats.

Vemode info at videohelp: www.videohelp.com [http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=VEMoDe] Main site: vemode.corecodec.org [http://vemode.corecodec.org/]

Japanese free .3gp program: www.nurs.or.jp [http://www.nurs.or.jp/%7Ecalcium/3gpp/3GP_Converter034.zip] This *looks* really good – haven't tried it yet.

Howto guide to output to Ipod includes some info on using the Japanese .3gp converter program (basically click the dropdown list at the bottom left to select English menus), also WinAP: www.tagworld.com [http://www.tagworld.com/ssj2_goha/PostDetail.aspx?id=8d1b3912-3d83-49b2-abc5-28d6f26e67a8]

2006 Jan 06 [ Fri ]

Reason for problem installing PKD

I had tried installing the font on some machines in an internet cafe and been surprised to find I had to uncheck the "install fonts to font folder" option. It's now occurred to me that on this system, I am probably not allowed to write to the system folder (including the fotns folder); presumably installing a font just writes an entry to the registry, which is allowed, and which just points to the font file wherever it may be.

It makes me wonder what happens when the My Documents (or wherever I put the font file) folder gets wiped, as happens periodically. I think that's what produces the puzzling "The PKD font is in use and cannot be overwritten" prompt, even when PKD is not on the list of installed fonts; there's a link to a previous install location in the registry, but the actual font is no longer there.

Using PKD for Thai

Here's a posting on this: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Asia/Thailand/Thai-language/pkdthai01.html]

2005 Dec 03 [ Sat ]

Have you been hitting one page of this site too often?

If I detect that you have been accessing a single page repeatedly, I may redirect your hits to this page.

If you see this page when you were trying to access something else, please *stop* trying to access it. If you continue to try, I may forbid aaccess to the entire site.

2005 Nov 26 [ Sat ]

My favorite movies

This is just a list that I want to keep on-line. I don't have any good links yet, so it won't be useful for anyone else.

Alien Cat People (both versions) Dr Zhivago Intelligence Men Showgirls The Empire Strikes Back The Pink Panther The Red Shoes The Tall Target Duck Soup The Three Days of the Condor Chinatown Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark The Long and the Short and the Tall The Good, the Bad and the Ugly From Russia with Love

2005 Nov 11 [ Fri ]

Using variables in dannydate

Should show today's date:

$dannydate::mytoday

2005 Nov 09 [ Wed ]

How to enter phonetic characters for Khmer using my PKD font

My font handles phonetics for Khmer, English and Thai: this note is just for Khmer.

Generally I have tried to allow all the phonetics used by Huffman, following for instance his use of the "h" character to represent aspiration. This allows him to avoid needing special characters like "bp" and "dt".

B oUB The "breve" character – that's what Huffmann calls it in his books. (Hence "B".) This is the thing that looks a bit like a tilde which he uses to indicate that a pair of vowels is pronounced short not long (his default for vowel pairs). In order to get it to appear in the right place, you need to key it at the *end* of the pair of vowels, and it then automagically appears in the right place. Likewise, I needed to *supply* a pair of vowels to get it to show up properly. Note that the "accent" diacritics that I use for Thai, like mAiF chAiF also show up to the left of their entered position.
C C I generally want to follow Huffman's system, but I have always been unhappy with the way he represents final consonants, especially the "ch". He just says they are unreleased; to my ear, a final "ch" sounds a lot more like "kt". The other final sounds are not so bad. Anyhow, I decided to throw in this character in order to represent what I feel is a different sound.
E E This of course is the sound of British English "met", or when long, "air". The unshifted e, of course, represents an Italian e sound.
G G The "ng" sound, as in English "singing", etc. Many sources get away with representing this sound with "ng", but that really isn't optimal.
I I This is the sound often represented as "eu", a nasal. I find the use of a sort of "i" a little unintuitive, but it *is* the standard as used by Huffman. I needed to make a lot of space around the character to allow diacritics to be used; maybe I should also increase the width of the bar of the i, so the gap is less disturbing.
N N The n-tilde character sometimes represented as "ny". It's important to use a single character for it in Khmer because that makes it clear that when used as a final, it is unreleased.
U U This is the 'schwa' character often represented as "er". it's a little unfortunate that I need to use a "u" to get a character that looks like an "e", but oh well. Actually, "u" is used for this sound in the Royal Thai romanization scheme.

Example of my new phonetic font "PKD.TTF" for Khmer, English and Thai

In order to display this page correctly you need to download and install my font. It's about 35 kB and there's no restrictions on use (I will probably go for a Creative Commons licence).

Download here: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/fonts/pkd.ttf]

I think it's uniquely easy to use, because you can access any of the characters just by using the shift key – I've replaced most of the usual upper-case characters by the new ones needed for phonetics.I think the allocations I chose are not hard to remember, eg "N" for n-tilde (ny), and "G" for "ng".

Because none of the characters have unusual bytecodes, this phonetic text can easily pass through 7-bit ASCII email systems, and can be created and edited with any editor and keyboard. In 7-bit ASCII of course, the font definition is absent, so what you see will be something like this:

kNOm rOOk mIn kIN te

which I think is not to tough to handle mentally.

If you have already installed the font on the computer you are using, and assuming your machine is set to use CSS to accept font definitions, it should display properly here:

kNOm rOOk mIn kIN te

In W2K, you install a font as follows: Start - settings - control panel - fonts - file - install new font

The file selection window is rather primitive and it may be easiest to just copy the file to the root of your hard drive if you don't now the path to your My Documents. Windows may complain "is currently in use and cannot be replaced"; if so, uncheck the "copy to fonts folder" option.

2005 Nov 08 [ Tue ]

Using Khmer fonts on webpages

1. Intro to using Cambodian fonts on computers the old-fashioned way, ie Limon (etc) rather than Unicode fonts: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Asia/Cambodia/Khmer-language/fonts03.html]

2. More of the above, including a discussion of zero-space fonts: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Asia/Cambodia/Khmer-language/fonts05.html]

3. Another tutorial on embedded fonts (off-site): www.spoono.com [http://www.spoono.com/html/tutorials/tutorial.php?id=19]

4. My sample webpage: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Asia/Cambodia/Khmer-language/fonts06.html]

5. Do you have to use .eot fonts, or can you use .ttf directly? This CSS2 document says you *can* use .ttf, but is it supported by real browsers? www.w3.org [http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html#descdef-src]

6. The .eot format itself is now unsupported by Microsoft (although still functional in IE itself): www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Computers/Internet/embedfonts04.html]

2005 Mar 02 [ Wed ]

Test of the "hide" plugin

This is only a test; please ignore.



I hope this information was useful. There may be a great deal more information on this site that is relevant to what you need. Take a look at the "site map" display at left; you can click on a topic to see many recent items on that topic.

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