db.0db.ro

Bucharest FM Radio Scan 2025

2025-08-29T11:45:00+03:00

Name	Frequency	Transmitter	RDS
Name	Frequency	Transmitter	PI	PTY
Radio Shumen	87.6 MHz	Veneț Bulgaria	8236	3
Radio Impuls	88.0 MHz	Euro Tower	E0D6	10
Radio Trinitas	88.5 MHz	Casa Poporului	E24D	20
Radio 1 Bulgaria	88.9 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Radio ZU	89.0 MHz	Unirii View Tower	E2AA
Dance FM	89.5 MHz	Turn Radiocom Berceni	E019
bTV Radio	89.9 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	839B	1
BNR Shumen	90.3 MHz	Silistra Bulgaria
Magic FM	90.8 MHz	CET Progresul	E210	13
Kiss FM	91.3 MHz	Istrița Buzău	515A
Darik Radio	91.6 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	824D	7
Național FM	91.7 MHz	Cămin Leu A	9250	9
TMRWLAND One World Radio	92.1 MHz	Turnul BRD	E222
Radio ZU	92.5 MHz	Buzau
Radio Veselina	93.1 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	8383	28
RFI România / RFI Monde	93.5 MHz	Cămin Leu A	E22C	1
Radio Fresh	93.6 MHz
Radio Vocea Evangheliei	94.2 MHz	Euro Tower	E2F8	20
FM+	94.4 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	8382	10
Radio Guerrilla	94.8 MHz		E0D8	9
Radio Trinitas	95.3 MHz	Bucegi Coștila	E24D
BNR Hristo Botev	95.7 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	8220	7
Kiss FM	96.1 MHz	CET Progresul	515A	9
Gold FM	96.9 MHz		E0D4
Radio Vocea Speranței	97.3 MHz	Hotarele Călărași	E2F8
BG Radio	97.4 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	8380	10
Radio România Muzical	97.6 MHz	Bucegi Coștila	EE02	14
Digi FM	97.9 MHz	Herăstrău	E059
București FM	98.3 MHz	Herăstrău	EE03	1
BNR Radio Shumen	98.6 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	8236	1
Virgin Radio	98.7 MHz	Buzau
Radio Veronika	99.0 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Radio ItsyBitsy FM	99.3 MHz	Turn Radiocom Berceni	E3C8	9
Digi FM	99.6 MHz	Bucegi Coștila	E059
Radio Focus	99.7 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Virgin Radio	100.2 MHz	Turnul BRD	E05F
Rock FM	100.6 MHz	CET Progresul	E057
BNR Horizont	100.9 MHz	Varna Bulgaria
Radio România Cultural	101.3 MHz	Herăstrău	EE01	1
Radio N-Joy	101.6 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	837E	9
Romantic FM	101.9 MHz	Unirii View Tower	E2AB
Radio România Actualități	102.2 MHz	Bucegi Coștila	EE00	1
Pro FM	102.8 MHz	Turn Radiocom Berceni	E029
BNR Horizont	103.0 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	8210	1
Radio Seven	103.4 MHz		E085
Radio Impuls	103.6 MHz	Sinaia Romania
Radio Romania Cultural	103.7 MHz	Istrita Romania	EE01
Digi24 FM	103.8 MHz	Turn Radiocom Berceni	E0DE
Bulgaria On Air	103.9 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Radio România Cultural	104.1 MHz	Bucegi Coștila	EE01
BNR Horizont	104.3 MHz	Dobrich Bulgaria	8211	9
Radio ItsyBitsy FM	104.5 MHz	Târgoviște	E2C8
Radio Romania Actualitati	104.6 MHz	Giurgiu
Radio România Muzical	104.8 MHz	Herăstrău	EE02	15
Radio România Actualități	105.3 MHz	Herăstrău	EE00	1
Sport Total FM	105.8 MHz	Turn Radiocom Berceni	3D44	4
3 FM	106.2 MHz	Unirii View Tower	E2AC	9
Europa FM	106.7 MHz	Turnul BRD	E299
Radio România Actualități	107.0 MHz	Istrița Buzău	EE00	1
BNR Hristo Botev	107.2 MHz	Silistra Bulgaria
Europa FM	107.5 MHz	Bucegi Coștila	E299

Used receiver: ATS125 ESP32-TEF6686 with built-in telescopic antenna

KOSS Porta Pro compatible Sennheiser earpads

2021-01-04T14:42:00+02:00

I'm a fan of the KOSS Porta Pro headphones. They are reasonably cheap, they sound very good and they're reasonably comfy. Best of all, you'll look like you came back from the future while you wear them.

The only issue I have with them is that finding replacement earpads can be quite difficult or expensive around some parts of Eastern Europe.

I was looking at the dimensions of various replacement earpads from different brands and I took a gamble ordering a pair of Sennheiser HZP 09 foams and whaddya know, they fit perfectly!

I couldn't find this documented anywhere on the web, so I thought I'd throw this up here.

self-updating static html site

2019-02-27T21:13:00+02:00

I like static html, it's secure, uses few resources and, theoretically, loads quickly. It only sucks when you want to update the content.

Static site generators help with the updating part, but you're not going to have a full python stack, pelican and your sources everywhere you go. But if you have the space and resources on your VPS to run your static site generator, maybe during the off-peak hours, it's very easy to have an auto-updating static site.

The sources can live happily on Github and you can use the built-in web editors to add or update content at your whim. The other part of this self-updating combo is a cron script that pulls the git repo, runs pelican and, as long as everything went well, copies the output files to your www root.

That's what this tiny script does, I have it scheduled to run every night:

#!/bin/sh
cd ~/0db_pelican/
git pull origin master
if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then
  echo "git failed"
  exit 1
fi
pelican -o output -s pelicanconf.py content
if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then
  echo "pelican failed"
  exit 1
fi
cp -r ~/0db_pelican/output/* ~/www/

South-East Romania AM Scan (WIP)

2019-02-10T19:45:00+02:00

Name	Frequency	Transmitter
Radio Antena Satelor	153 KHz	Bod, Brașov, România
Radio Antena Satelor	531 KHz	SNR Urziceni, România
Kossuth Rádió	540 KHz	Solt, Bács-Kiskun, Hungary
Radio Ukrainske 1	549 KHz	Mykolaiv Luch, Ukrayina
Radio România Actualități	558 KHz	Târgu Jiu, România
Radio România Actualități	567 KHz	Brașov, România
BNR Horizont	576 KHz	Gramada, Vidin, Bulgaria
IRIB Radio Farhang	585 KHz	Gheshlagh, Iran
Radio Antena Satelor	603 KHz	București Herăstrău, România
IRIB World Service	612 KHz	Qasr-e Shirin, Iran
Radio Timișoara	630 KHz	Orțișoara, Timișoara, România
Radio Dvojka	639 KHz	RKS Liblice 2, Liblice, Czech Republic
SBC Radio Riyadh	648 KHz	Bahrah, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
RAI Radio 1	657 KHz	Pisa, Italy
IRIB Radio Fars	666 KHz	Shiraz, Iran
QMC Qatar Radio	675 KHz	Al`Arish, Qatar
??	684 KHz	??
IRIB World Service	702 KHz	Kiashahr, Iran
Radio România Actualități	711 KHz	Vadu Izei, Maramureș, România
Radio România Actualități	720 KHz	RDF Nufărul, Nufăru, Tulcea, România
ERA Proto Programma	729 KHz	Athens, Greece
RNE Radio Nacional	738 KHz	Barcelona, Spain
Radio România Actualități	756 KHz	? Coșevița ?, Lugoj, România
IRIB World Service	765 KHz	Chabahar, Iran
RNE Radio Nacional	774 KHz	Valencia, Spain
SRTV 1 Dimashk	783 KHz	Tartus, Syria
??	792 KHz	??
Makedonsko Radio 1	810 KHz	Ovče Pole, Republic of Macedonia
ERTU	819 KHz	Al-Barnameg al-Aam, Egypt
IRIB Radio Esfahan	837 KHz	Esfahan, Iran
Radio România Actualități	855 KHz	Tâncăbești, România
ERTU	864 KHz	Al Quran Al Karim, Egypt
Radio Moldova Actualități	873 KHz	Chișinău, Moldova
RAI Radio 1	900 KHz	Milano, Italy
Radio România Actualități	909 KHz	Cluj, România
SRTV 1 Dimashk	936 KHz	Homs, Syria
Radio România Actualități	945 KHz	Miercurea Ciuc, România
Radio Dvojka	954 KHz	Dobrochov, Prostějov, Czech Republic
RTT R. Tunis Chaîne Int.	963 KHz	Djedeida, Tunisia
Chaîne 2	981 KHz	Ouled Fayet, Algeria
Radio Sawa	990 KHz	Cape Greco, Cyprus
TWR Europe	999 KHz	Grigoriopol, Moldova
ERTU	1008 KHz	Al-Barnameg al-Aam, Egypt
IRIB Radio Tabriz	1026 KHz	Azarshahr, Iran
Radio Eli / TWR	1035 KHz	Tartu, Estonia
??	1044 KHz	Greece
Radio România Iași	1053 KHz	Uricani, Iași
RAI Radio 1	1062 KHz	Cagliari, Italy
??	1071 KHz	??
IRIB World Service	1080 KHz	Mahshahr, Iran
??	1098 KHz	??
Dankó Rádió	1116 KHz	Miskolk, Hungary
Radio România Actualități	1152 KHz	Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, România
IRIB World Service	1161 KHz	Qasr-e Shirin, Iran
Radio Capodistria	1170 KHz	Beli Križ, Slovenia
Radio România Actualități	1179 KHz	Gălbeni, Filipești, Bacău, România
MR4 Nemzetiségi Adások	1188 KHz	Hungary
Radio România Minorități	1197 KHz	Târgu Mureș, România
??	1206 KHz	Greece
?? in English	1215 KHz	??
IRIB World Service	1224 KHz	Kish, Iran
TWR Europe	1233 KHz	Cape Greco, Cyprus
Radio Sultanate Oman	1242 KHz	As Seeb, Oman
Dankó Rádió	1251 KHz	Hungary
??	1269 KHz	??
??	1287 KHz	??
COPE Valencia	1296 KHz	Valencia, Spain
??	1305 KHz	??
Radio Oltenia	1314 KHz	Craiova, România
Radio România Minorități	1323 KHz	Târgu Mureș, România
Radio România Actualități	1332 KHz	Galați, România
MR4 Nemzetiségi Adások	1350 KHz	Győr, Hungary
TWR Asia Iran	1377 KHz	Gavar, Armenia
Radio Baltic Waves Int.	1386 KHz	Kaunas, Lithuania
Radio Cluj	1404 KHz	Vadu Izei, Maramureș, România
Vesti FM / TWR	1413 KHz	Grigoriopol, Moldova
Radio România Actualități	1422 KHz	Râmnicu Vâlcea, România
SBA Radio Riyadh	1440 KHz	Ras Al Khair, Saudi Arabia
Radio România Actualități	1458 KHz	Valu lui Traian, Constanța, România
TWR Europe	1467 KHz	Roumoules, France
Radio Moldova Actualități	1494 KHz	Cahul, Moldova
??	1503 KHz	??
SBA Al-Quran al-Karim	1512 KHz	Saudi Arabia
SBC Radio Riyadh	1521 KHz	Saudi Arabia
Radio Constanța	1530 KHz	RDF Nufărul, Nufăru, Tulcea, România
TWR Europe	1548 KHz	Grigoriopol, Moldova
??	1557 KHz	Greece
RAI Radio 1	1575 KHz	Genova, Italy
Radio Vocea Speranței	1584 KHz	Sighetu Marmației, Maramureș, România
Radio România Actualități	1593 KHz	Ion Corvin, Constanța, România
Radio Vocea Speranței	1602 KHz	Piatra Neamț, România
??	1611 KHz	??

2018-06-07 New FM Frequencies allocation

2018-07-07T11:30:00+03:00

Name	Frequency	Location
Radio Jurnal Spiritual	87.8 MHz	România/Bacău/Onești
Radio Maria	87.8 MHz	România/Neamț/Roman
Buzz FM	87.9 MHz	România/Buzău/Buzău
Radio Transilvania	88.0 MHz	România/Bihor/Beiuș
Stil FM	88.2 MHz	România/Călărași/Oltenița
Bucovina FM	88.8 MHz	România/Suceava/Câmpulung Moldovenesc
Itsy Bitsy	89.1 MHz	România/Olt/Slatina
News FM	89.1 MHz	România/Iași/Pașcani
Radio Civic	89.9 MHz	România/Tulcea/Sfântu Gheorghe
GO FM	90.4 MHz	România/Sibiu/Sibiu
Radio Trinitas	92.0 MHz	România/Suceava/Gura Humorului
Maria Radio	92.3 MHz	România/Covasna/Covasna
Maramureș FM	93.8 MHz	România/Maramureș/Sighetu Marmației
Mesagerul FM	94.0 MHz	România/Bacău/Bacău
Radio Guerrilla	94.3 MHz	România/Iași/Iași
Sport Total FM	97.9 MHz	România/Mehedinți/Drobeta-Turnu Severin
Doina FM	98.9 MHz	România/Constanța/Mangalia
Radio Renașterea	99.1 MHz	România/Cluj/Huedin
Național FM	100.7 MHz	România/Neamț/Piatra Neamț
Szepviz FM	101.7 MHz	România/Harghita/Miercurea Ciuc
Stil FM	105.5 MHz	România/Călărași/Călărași
Radio Civic	106.0 MHz	România/Dolj/Vârvoru de Jos

Oltenița FM Radio Scan

2018-05-28T22:30:00+03:00

Name	Frequency	Transmitter	RDS
Name	Frequency	Transmitter	PI	PTY
BNR Shumen	87.6 MHz	Venets Bulgaria	8236	3
Buzz FM	87.9 MHz	Istrița România
Radio Impuls	88.0 MHz	București România	E0D6	23
Stil FM	88.2 MHz	Oltenița România	E437
BNR Stara Zagora	88.3 MHz	Stara Zagora Bulgaria
BNR Horizont	88.5 MHz	Tutrakan Bulgaria	8210	1
Radio 1 Bulgaria	88.9 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Radio ZU	89.0 MHz	București România	E2AA
Europa FM	89.4 MHz	Giurgiu România	E299
Dance FM	89.5 MHz	București România	E019
Radio Vocea Evangheliei	89.7 MHz	Buzău România
BG Radio	89.9 MHz	Silistra Bulgaria
BNR Horizont	90.1 MHz	Shumen Bulgaria	8211	3
BNR Shumen	90.3 MHz	Silistra Bulgaria
Magic FM	90.8 MHz	București România	E210
Radio România Actualități	91.1 MHz	Oltenița România	EE00	1
Kiss FM	91.3 MHz	Buzău România
Național FM	91.7 MHz	București România	9250	10
Vibe FM	92.1 MHz	București Romania	E222
Bulgaria on Air	92.3 MHz	Silistra Bulgaria
Radio ZU	92.5 MHz	Buzău România
Tanănana	92.7 MHz	București România	E067
BNR Horizont	92.8 MHz	Tărgovište Bulgaria
Radio Veselina	93.1 MHz	Razgrad Bulgaria
Radio Focus	93.2 MHz	Tervel Bulgaria
RFI România / RFI Monde	93.5 MHz	București România	E05D
Radio Fresh!	93.6 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Digi FM	93.9 MHz	Băneasa România	E059
BNR Shumen	94.0 MHz	Tărgovište Bulgaria
Radio Vocea Evangheliei	94.2 MHz	București România	E2F8	20
FM+	94.4 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Radio Guerrilla	94.8 MHz	București România	E0D8
Radio Focus	95.0 MHz	Isperih Bulgaria
Radio Trinitas	95.3 MHz	București România	E24D
BNR Hristo Botev	95.7 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Radio N-Joy	96.0 MHz	Tutrakan Bulgaria	837E	9
Kiss FM	96.1 MHz	București România	515A
Kiss FM	96.5 MHz	Giurgiu România
Radio Focus	96.7 MHz	Kyustendil Bulgaria
Gold FM	96.9 MHz	București România	E0D4
BNR Shumen	97.0 MHz	Razgrad Bulgaria
Radio Vocea Evangheliei	97.3 MHz	Oltenița România
BG Radio	97.4 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Radio România Muzical	97.6 MHz	Coștila România	EE02	14
Digi FM	97.9 MHz	București România	E059
București FM	98.3 MHz	București România	EE03	1
BNR Shumen	98.6 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Virgin FM	98.7 MHz	Buzău România
Radio Veronika	99.0 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Radio ItsyBitsy FM	99.3 MHz	București România	E2C8
Fresh FM	99.4 MHz	Oltenița România	E032	9
Digi FM	99.6 MHz	Coștila România	E059
Radio Focus	99.7 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Virgin FM	100.2 MHz	București România	E05F
Radio Energy	100.5 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Rock FM	100.6 MHz	București România	E075
Darik Radio	100.7 MHz	Silistra Bulgaria
BNR Horizont	100.9 MHz	Varna Bulgaria
Radio România Cultural	101.3 MHz	București România	EE01	1
Radio Energy	101.5 MHz	Silistra Bulgaria
Radio N-Joy	101.6 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Romantic FM	101.9 MHz	București România	E258
BNR Horizont	102.0 MHz	Shumen Bulgaria	8210	1
Radio România Actualități	102.2 MHz	Coștila România	EE00	1
BNR Horizont	102.5 MHz	Nessebar Bulgaria
Pro FM	102.8 MHz	București România	E029
BNR Horizont	103.0 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	8210	1
BNR Horizont	103.3 MHz	Silistra Bulgaria
Radio Seven	103.4 MHz	București România	E085
Radio România Cultural	103.7 MHz	Istrița România	EE01
Bulgaria on Air	103.9 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Radio România Cultural	104.1 MHz	Coștila România	EE01
Radio Focus	104.5 MHz	Tutrakan Bulgaria	837F	1
Radio România Muzical	104.8 MHz	București România	EE02	14
Darik Radio	105.0 MHz	Sofia Bulgaria
Radio România Actualități	105.3 MHz	București România	EE00	1
Stil FM	105.5 MHz	Călărași România	E437
Sport Total FM	105.8 MHz	București România	3D44
Radio România Actualități	106.2 MHz	Dragoș Vodă România	EE00	1
Europa FM	106.7 MHz	București România	E299
Radio România Actualități	107.0 MHz	Istrița România	EE00	1
BNR Hristo Botev	107.2 MHz	Silistra Bulgaria
Smart FM	107.3 MHz	București România	70CC
Europa FM	107.5 MHz	Coștila România	E299
Darik Radio	107.9 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria

Used receivers: Tecsun PL-380, Tivdio V-115, Sony Ericsson W310i, Samsung Galaxy SIII, Mitsubishi DY-2E56GY (Colt Z30)

Bucharest FM Radio Scan

2018-05-25T22:30:00+03:00

Name	Frequency	Transmitter	RDS
Name	Frequency	Transmitter	PI	PTY
Radio Shumen	87.6 MHz	Veneț Bulgaria	8236	3
Radio Impuls	88.0 MHz	Euro Tower	E0D6	23
Radio Trinitas	88.5 MHz	Casa Poporului	E24D
Radio ZU	89.0 MHz	Unirii View Tower	E2AA
Dance FM	89.5 MHz	Turn Radiocom Berceni	E019
bTV Radio	89.9 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	839B
Realitatea FM	90.2 MHz	Piața Victoriei	E132
Magic FM	90.8 MHz	CET Progresul	E210	13
Kiss FM	91.3 MHz	Istrița Buzău	515A
Național FM	91.7 MHz	Cămin Leu A	9250	10
Vibe FM	92.1 MHz	Turnul BRD	E222
Tanănana	92.7 MHz	Piața Victoriei	E067
Radio Veselina	93.1 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	8383
RFI România / RFI Monde	93.5 MHz	Cămin Leu A	E05D
Radio Vocea Speranței	94.2 MHz	Euro Tower	E2F8	20
Radio Guerrilla	94.8 MHz		E0D8
Radio Trinitas	95.3 MHz	Bucegi Coștila	E24D
BNR Programa Hristo Botev	95.7 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria
Kiss FM	96.1 MHz	CET Progresul	515A	9
Gold FM	96.9 MHz		E0D4
Radio Vocea Speranței	97.3 MHz	Hotarele Călărași	E2F8
Radio România Muzical	97.6 MHz	Bucegi Coștila	EE02	14
Digi FM	97.9 MHz	Herăstrău	E059
București FM	98.3 MHz	Herăstrău	EE03	1
BNR Radio Shumen	98.6 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	8236
Radio ItsyBitsy FM	99.3 MHz	Turn Radiocom Berceni	E2C8
Digi FM	99.6 MHz	Bucegi Coștila	E059
Virgin Radio	100.2 MHz	Turnul BRD	E05F	9
Rock FM	100.6 MHz	CET Progresul	E057
Radio România Cultural	101.3 MHz	Herăstrău	EE01	1
Romantic FM	101.9 MHz	Unirii View Tower	E258
Radio România Actualități	102.2 MHz	Bucegi Coștila	EE00	1
Pro FM	102.8 MHz	Turn Radiocom Berceni	E029
BNR Horizont	103.0 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria	8210	1
Radio Seven	103.4 MHz		E085
Chill FM	103.8 MHz	Turn Radiocom Berceni	E0DE
Radio România Cultural	104.1 MHz	Bucegi Coștila	EE01
Radio ItsyBitsy FM	104.5 MHz	Târgoviște	E2C8
Radio România Muzical	104.8 MHz	Herăstrău	EE02	14
Radio România Actualități	105.3 MHz	Herăstrău	EE00	1
Sport Total FM	105.8 MHz	Turn Radiocom Berceni	3D44	4
3 FM	106.2 MHz	Unirii View Tower	E2AC	9
Europa FM	106.7 MHz	Turnul BRD	E299
Radio România Actualități	107.0 MHz	Istrița Buzău	EE00	1
Smart FM	107.3 MHz	Turnul BRD	70CC
Europa FM	107.5 MHz	Bucegi Coștila	E299
Darik Radio	107.9 MHz	Ruse Bulgaria

Squashfs Tools 4.0 Windows Binaries

2015-05-14T06:11:00+03:00

DomoticX has built a set of varying versions of squashfs versions, including 4.3 + lzma. You can find them on the DomoticX website, lower down on the that page.

My original post:

In case you didn't know already (unless you're a multiplatform code warrior, you probably didn't), the Squashfs tools have some problems while being compiled under Cygwin. In fact, they don't compile at all, mainly because a few lacking headers and multiprocessor detection. Nevertheless, actually convincing them to build isn't difficult at all.

To save you the extra work of doing so, I've created a patch, which can be applied against the aforementioned 4.0 version of the squashfs-tools, and I've made it available here: http://www.mediafire.com/?1txydxozzdo

If you're too lazy to patch and build your own, I've also uploaded the binaries. These don't actually need Cygwin to be installed, as long as the 2 .dll files remain in the same folder (or in the PATH) as the executables. Get those from here (tar.gz archive):

http://www.mediafire.com/?yymd2mzlmnn

Enjoy!

Edit: Upon user request, I have also compiled and uploaded squashfs 3.0, 3.1 and 3.4, and their corresponding patches:

File	Download Link
SquashFS 3.0 Cygwin	binaries (tar.gz) patch
SquashFS 3.1 Cygwin	binaries (tar.gz) patch
SquashFS 3.4 Cygwin	binaries (tar.gz) patch
SquashFS 4.0 Cygwin	binaries (tar.gz) patch

Motorola Z8 minimally modded 2939-based MP

2013-08-13T09:27:00+03:00

Here's a minimally modded monsterpack for the Motorola MotoRIZR Z8 based on ESPOO_U_46.05.40I - build 2393:

http://www.mediafire.com/?bsel22hhtj82b30.

Modifications consist of:

patched installserver.exe that doesn't check application certificates (taken from Elegance V2.0 iRzr)
disabled d_exc debugging at boot (by replacing SSCForStartupMode0.RSC and SSCForStartupMode1.RSC in private10205c44\ with the respective files from ESPOO_U_46.04.84G)

That's about it, no funky themes, icons, DRM or whatnot... Enjoy!

A Better GNU chroot for Android Phones Using Raspbian

2013-02-17T17:58:00+02:00

A common way to get all of the GNU/Linux utilities on an Android phone is to set up a chroot environment, either on a dedicated partition or in a filesystem image. Both methods yeld the expected results, but the source of those files can make a difference. For instance, Debian armel binaries are compiled for ARMv4 and higher architectures with no support for hardware floating point functionality, while the newer armhf EABI targets ARMv7 and newer processors. This means that ARMv5 and v6 processors with the vector floating point unit get no love. However, with the introduction of the Raspberry Pi, which sports an ARMv6 processor, demanding mobile phone users can steal a bit of the love.

I've done this on a MSM7227-powered LG Optimus One (P500), but the same cpu can be found in a lot of phones, like the older Galaxy Mini, the Optimus Me and the list could continue. However, this should work on other, possibly newer processors too. Enough of the chatter, let's see how we can get a Raspbian chroot on the phone.

dd if=/dev/zero of=raspbian.img bs=1 count=0 seek=1G
mkfs.ext2 raspbian.img
tune2fs -c0 raspbian.img
mount -o loop,rw raspbian.img /mnt
debootstrap --foreign --no-check-gpg --include=ca-certificates --arch=armhf wheezy /mnt http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian
umount /mnt/
debootstrap --second-stage

Got id3 tags in your flac?

2012-05-28T18:03:00+03:00

Id3 tags are busting your flac party (especially with acxi/oggenc choking with ERROR: Input file [...] is not a supported format)? Just grab yourself a copy of id3v2 and run it like

id3v2 -D ./*.flac

If you're rocking the party with Arch Linux, you can find both id3v2 and acxi in the AUR.

There, that fixed it.

Three Gimp Gripes

2012-05-07T21:00:00+03:00

Gimp 2.8 has been out for a couple of days and I had the chance to use it a little bit. Everybody in the scene seems to be awestruck by the single window mode and I approve, it is sweet. But there are a couple of new features that seem to be in dire need of improvement. Here's are my top three Gimp 2.8 issues:

Top Gripe: the combo slider/text input fields

They seem to be designed for the digital painter who swooshes his 50-something pixel brush on his Wacom Cintiq. Also, they require that you pay full attention to where you click when wanting to drag or type.

I often happened to hit the text area when wanting to drag the slider, or to engage the fine scroll mode instead of the absolute point click. This also applies to the layer opacity control, where this fancy combined textbox/slider appears to be total overkill. The precision drag mode is utterly useless since opacity is measured with single decimal precision.

A better brush size control would provide more finesse at the smaller levels and gradually increase the progression by which the brush upscales.

Second best: the rotation guides

What's the issue with grid lines that are supposed to help you estimate the rotation? You can't see what's behind them properly, so they actually get in the way when you try to align the rotated element to another part of the image.

I rated this second best because you can turn the guides off or choose other options. Unfortunately, the setting isn't remembered so, every time you want to rotate some random bunch of pixels, you will need to reset the thing.

Last, but not least: the new text control

The text layer features introduced with Gimp 2.8 are great, individual letters can be sized, colored or assigned a different font. But in the process of adding these functions other conveniences were rendered less accessible. For instance, moving a text layer around while you are editing it now requires that the user keeps the Ctrl and Alt keys pressed while dragging the text layer. Usually, such shortcuts were displayed in the status bar, but this doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Another text layer gripe is related to resizing text. To be able to resize the whole content of a layer you will need to select it, pretty much like you would to in a text editor. Doing so highlights the text and, obviously, obscures the background, making it harder to see how your word art fits over the background.

One possible resolution to this would be to have the Tool Options alter the entire text layer and to use the hovering dialog for fine control.

Most of these issues will probably be fixed by the time the next revision comes out and we should keep in mind that the old interface had over 15 years of development behind it. Personally, I'm looking forward to the full Gegl transition that is in store for us Gimp users.

Opera - Access to this port is disabled

2011-02-20T14:13:00+02:00

You're happily browsing the interwebs in Opera, and you suddenly get a big red error: Access to this port is disabled for security reasons., just like in the image below. Who you gonna call? Read on...

We just need to pop Opera's hood open and do a little tuning. So open a new tab and go to this address: opera:config

I can't remember for sure, but it might give you a warning that you might break stuff... just plow ahead. Eventually that bold red title should read Preferences editor. Underneath that title is a search box, and we're gonna use it to scour the preferences for the word ports. It should look like this:

Once you found it, pop the port number into the text box that says Permitted Ports. The port number is the bit just after the website's main address, delimited by a colon on the left and a slash on the right.

So, for http://gopher.info-underground.net:70/, the port number is, of course, 70. If you want to allow access to more than one port, separate them with semicolons. Now click save, press the OK button of the messagebox that appears, close the tab then refresh your page.

Voila:

Blue Heaven - a quick review

2011-02-20T10:12:00+02:00

Yesterday LO 192 was released and in it Dan & Fab pimped a recently released audiobook, "Blue Heaven", written and read by lostnbronx. Since I'm a sucker for audiobooks I grabbed it right away, and since I found it most excellent I thought I'd blabber a bit about it right here.

From a dramatic point of view, it really is, well, dramatic. I'll try to keep this spoiler-free, so I'm just going to say that the psychology of the (main?!) character is deeply connected to the action, and the two swap in and out of focus, in a very neatly orchestrated manner. Since I mentioned the action, it takes place in Skyhigh, a space colony/space station city inhabited by Earth's outcasts. Although this place does share a few characteristics with the typical sci-fi counterpart, the resemblance stops there.

I won't go into detail about the action because I want you to discover it yourselves, so I'm gonna cheat and skip to the end. While I anticipated the finale, the action that leads to it surpassed any of my expectations. It suffices to say that there is a climax there, and it will surprise you.

On the technical side, somewhere in the ogg file's tags it says: "[...] these four pieces, rather ineptly cut together by lostnbronx [...]." It's anything but ineptly, lostnbronx did an amazing job with the audio backgrounds, and it's obvious all-around that this was a work of passion. There is a bit of unevenness in the audio levels or tonality near the beginning, maybe a switch of recording equipment, but other than that I think that overall the recording easily rivals Audible productions.

The reading/acting is very well carried out, and IMHO lostnbronx has a really cool voice.

That's about it, head on over to lostnbronx's webpage for Blue Heaven at https://archive.org/details/BlueHeaven for audio downloads or the text version (Note: the website errors out in Opera, but it works great in Firefox). Extra geek brownie points of you do it via Gopher: link.

If you're a lazyass with HTML5 powers, just admit that _there is no thought, only action_, then click the play button below.

If you can't heard this sound, try with Firefox:

How to download full ogg albums from archive.org

2010-09-20T20:30:00+03:00

If you download files from archive.org's audio section, you probably observed by now that, while there are options to download all the files in 64Kbps or variable bitrate MP3, there is no ogg download of the same type.

Don't forge ahead right clicking all individual ogg downloads, we can get some open source software to help.

For example purposes, let's pick some Blind Willie McTell music. There are only three songs there, but it should be enough for you to get the basic idea.

The first step is quite simple: we need to get a list of links towards those ogg files. If you're using Firefox, all you need to do is to expand the list of songs on the left side of the page, under the MP3 zip downloads, then select all its text, right click it and choose "View Selection Source". It's a bit complicated to explain, but this screenshot should help:

If you aren't using Firefox, just open the source of the page (CTRL+U in most browsers) and search for the first instance of the string ".ogg". It should occur around line 222, and nicely included in some divs will be that list of links that I was referring to.

Just copy that bit of html and pop it into a text editor of your choice, then save it, call the file "links.html" for example. And now for the real action, let's call upon that open source help. It's something along the lines of:

wget -Fi links.html -B http://www.archive.org

What we're doing here is asking wget to download all the files referred to in links.html. The catch is that the links are relative to the server root so, with the aid of the "-B" parameter, we're basically telling wget that the server is archive.org.

That's all, hope it helps someone!

Installing Tiny Core Linux on a USB drive

2010-09-18T12:40:00+03:00

There's a lot of reasons to have a portable USB Linux setup that does something else than actually duplicating the Live CD of distro X. With Tiny Core that's different, since it does away with the solid squashfs setup that most live distros have and, if you follow the steps outlined in this tutorial, you'll also get a real home folder, not some copy-on-write persistence loopback file. Note: the following tutorial has been originally written as a plain text file and it is presented below as such. Some commands, if not run carefully, can become dangerous to your data, so I can only advise you to keep your eyes open for any mistakes. Other than that, I'm open to questions, so don't hesitate to leave a comment.

== Installing Tiny Core on a USB drive ==
== the ext2 way ==

In this tutorial I will walk you through installing Tiny Core Linux on a
USB drive in a way that will enable it to maintain top speed while including
useful features like persistence and low RAM usage.

* Prerequisites:
- an existing Linux system with fdisk and extlinux;
- an USB drive >= 128MB;

* Getting the goods.
Since we're talking Tiny Core here, we might as well start with getting the
ISO image that will form the base of our fresh USB drive installation. The
latest version can always be found at:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/3.x/release/tinycore-current.iso

Just get it with wget or something, it's a small download.
With that taken care of, it's time to prepare the USB drive.

* Preparing the USB drive.
I'm assuming that the USB drive you'll be installing to is a spare one that
you have laying around. If that's not the case, back up everything from it,
since the next step _WILL WIPE IT CLEAN_.
Also, all the following utilities require super-user permissions, so you will
either have to prefix their respective commands with "sudo", or just go with
"su" once.
With the drive firmly inserted into a USB port, you'll want to umount it.
Then open a terminal and, replacing X with the appropriate letter, do a:

fdisk /dev/sdX

Fdisk will open and will present you with an interactive mode that requires
you to enter one letter commands. I will further write these commands in this
form: [C], meaning that you'll press the "c" key then Enter.

First up, we will disable DOS compatibility, since it's of no use to us or
to Tiny Core. Enter [C], and fdisk should reply with "DOS Compatibility flag
is not set." Then press [U], so that everything will be displayed in sectors
instead of cylinders {EW!}.

With that out of the way, we want to make sure that the partition table on
the USB drive is in order, and we'll do that with [O]. That should return
"Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier {some hex value}."

Now that we're all set up, it's time to create the ext2 partition that will
receive our fresh Tiny Core setup. To do that, enter [N], then [P], then [1].
For the first sector and last sector inputs, just confirm the default values
by pressing Enter. This whole series of commands created for us a primary
partition that covers the whole drive.

A couple more commands, and we'll be done with fdisk. We'll want to set the
partition type to 83, to mark it as a Linux partition. That can be achieved
with [T] followed by [83]. Then we'll mark the partition as active by pressing
[A], then [1]. This way the systems that will be booting from the USB drive
will know on what partition to look for the files - partition 1 in our case.

That pretty much concludes the fdisk step, so we'll write everything to disk
by pressing [W]. Fdisk should say "The partition table has been altered!", then
quit.

Now we have a USB drive with a neat partition, but we have no filesystem.
Time to create one:

mkfs.ext2 -L "tc" /dev/sdX1

Of course, replace X with the appropriate letter for the USB drive. The
mkfs.ext2 command just created an ext2 filesystem on the partition, and labeled
it "tc".

Now the most comfortable step to have the partition mounted and to make sure
that the kernel is up to date with the modifications we made is to run

eject sdX

then pop the USB out of the port and insert it back. By now your desktop
environment should have automagically mounted the partition to /media/tc.
I will assume that is the case, so all the following commands will reflect
that situation. If it's different in your case, alter them accordingly.

* Getting TinyCore on the USB drive
Now that we have a clean base for our install, it's time to proceed. To place
the required files on there, we'll first need to access them, by mounting the
ISO image. Easy, right?

mount -o loop -t iso9660 tinycore-current.iso /mnt

This made the contents of the ISO image accessible in the /mnt folder. Now
to copy them onto the USB partition:

cp -R /mnt/boot /media/tc/

We're done with the ISO image, so we might as well get rid of it.

umount tinycore-current.iso
rm tinycore-current.iso

We have the files on the USB drive, but they came from a CD, so the
bootloader configuration is tailored for CD media. Let's fix it:

cd /media/tc/boot/
mv isolinux extlinux
mv extlinux/isolinux.cfg extlinux/extlinux.conf
rm extlinux/isolinux.bin

You may have noticed "extlinux" pop up in those commands. That is the
bootloader we're gonna use. We could have used grub, but I don't think the
added complexity is really warranted in our simple boot case. We won't be
taking care of the bootloader install right now, we'll leave that for last.

We also need to make a couple of directories that Tiny Core needs:

mkdir -p /media/tc/tce/optional
mkdir /media/tc/opt

What we will take care of is tuning the boot parameters so that Tiny Core
will know what devices to use and how to use them for maximum performance.
As you'd expect, the drive designation won't stay the same as the USB drive
is used on different computers, so we need another way of referring to it
instead of /dev/sdX1. Luckily, when we formatted the partition, it also
received a unique identification in the form of a long alphanumeric string.
To find out that string, we need to run:

blkid -s UUID /dev/sdX1

This command will output something along the lines of
/dev/sdX1: UUID="{some long string}" - copy the UUID= part, because we
will need it in this next step.

Now open extlinux/extlinux.conf in your favorite text editor. This file
contains several lines that detail what kernel to use and how that kernel
should be started. We are interested in the "append initrd={...} line.
To this line we are going to add several things:

waitusb=5 tce=UUID="..." restore=UUID="..." home=UUID="..." opt=UUID="..."

Note that you will need to insert the actual UUID string that you obtained
from the blkid command instead of "...". Also, the file might be read only, but
that can be quickly fixed with a "chmod +w extlinux.conf"
Let's go over the added tags:
- waitusb=5 tells tiny core to wait for 5 seconds before searching for USB
devices. This might be needed in case the drive isn't detected that fast.
You're free to try smaller values, or remove the waitusb bit completely.
However, I advise you to keep it for compatibility reasons.
The other four parameters (tce, restore, home, opt) tell Tiny Core to store
packages on the USB drive, to look for back-ups in there and, finally, to place
the home and opt folders on that same partition.
Additionally, you might want to add some other parameters. You can read all
about those in the extlinux folder, by opening the text files named "f2"
and "f3".

We're almost done, it's time to add that missing bootloader. Assuming that
you have syslinux/extlinux installed, it's just a matter of running

extlinux -i /media/tc/boot/extlinux

This doesn't output much, but it does give us an info that we'll use in the
next step: "/media/tc/boot/extlinux is device /dev/sdX1". Remember that
"/dev/sdX" part.
With that we've taken care of the partition boot sector, but that doesn't
mean that the USB drive's master boot record is as we want it to be. Again,
assuming that you have syslinux installed, you can fix that quickly:

cat /usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin > /dev/sdX

where "/dev/sdX" is the device that was identified by extlinux. Also note that
the trailing "1" was omitted, since we are referring to the whole USB drive,
not the first partition.

That's it, we're mostly done. The Tiny Core install is ready, all you need
to do now is make sure all the data has been written to disk, then you can
reboot and take it for a spin:

cd /
eject sdX
reboot

* Finishing notes
Once you have booted your fresh new TinyCore install, you should edit the
/opt/.filetool.list text file, and remove the "home/" line. That way, you
won't end up with large quantities ofduplicate copies of files on the
partition and in the back-up when you shutdown the system.
This tutorial covers only a small portion of what you can do with Tiny Core.
If you want to do more complex things, read up on what can be achieved with
this operating sistem at http://tinycorelinux.com/. Also, the wiki has quite
a lot of valuable information - http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/tiki-index.php

Minimal Rockbox scrobbler.log to libre.fm submitter

2010-08-30T19:56:00+03:00

I've recently found myself on a severely resource-limited computer, and I tried to find a way to submit my listening history from my Rockbox device to libre.fm without needing a lot of dependencies. After a bit of searching I stumbled upon a script made by a couple of Linux Outlaws listeners, back on the LO forum... but it had a couple of glitches.

The script only works as a converter from the scrobbler.log format to the one used by import.py - a libre.fm migration tool, so you basically needed to run a couple of commands just to upload some tracks.

Another hassle was that the script didn't filter the skipped tracks, effectively spamming my listening history with songs I didn't feel like listening that day. Also, the duplicate entries weren't filtered either.

I've modified the script to fix those issues, and to invoke import.py automagically for you.

Just save it as somename.sh in a folder of your choice, along with import.py and gobble.py from the libre.fm project. Then edit it and change line 46 with your username.

If you don't need automatic scrobbling, comment lines 46 and 47, and a rockbox.log file with be left in the current folder, for you to manually import. Run it with ./somename.sh /path/to/your/rockbox/player/mount/point

Here's the script:

#!/bin/bash
#A script to convert Rockbox .scrobbler.logs to a format suitable for libre.fm
#Just run this script as "./scrobble.sh /path/to/scrobbler_log_file"
#You may have to change the timezone (on line 20 I.E. UTC+1 = British summer time)
# to suit your timezone if you get errors.
#The file can then be uploaded via the import.py script found here
# http://ideas.libre.fm/index.php/Using_lastscrape
#Place import.py and gobble.py in the same folder as the script for automatic
# submission, otherwise comment lines 46 and 47 (by adding a "#" in front).

#Remove the uneeded info

cat $1/.scrobbler.log | grep -Pv "\tS\t" | sed '1,3d' | cut -f 1,3 > /tmp/scrobtracks.tmp


#convert timestamps from epoch time to human readable

cat $1/.scrobbler.log | grep -Pv "\tS\t" | sed '1,3d' | cut -f 7 | while read line
do
date -d '1970-01-01 UTC+3 '$line' seconds' +"%FT%TZ" >> /tmp/scrobdate.tmp
done


#build finished file

paste /tmp/scrobtracks.tmp /tmp/scrobdate.tmp > /tmp/scroblog.tmp

awk '!x[$0]++' /tmp/scroblog.tmp > ./rockbox.log

NUM=`cat /tmp/scrobdate.tmp | wc -l`

clear
echo "-------------------------------------------"
echo ": There are $NUM tracks in your rockbox.log :"
echo "-------------------------------------------"

rm /tmp/scrobdate.tmp
rm /tmp/scrobtracks.tmp
rm /tmp/scroblog.tmp

echo ""
echo ""
echo "Finished processing"
echo "Starting import"
echo ""
./import.py -s http://turtle.libre.fm/ YOUR_LIBRE.FM_USERNAME ./rockbox.log
rm ./rockbox.log
rm $1/.scrobbler.log
echo ""
echo ""
echo "Done"
echo ""

EOF

QtScrobble RPMs for Fedora 13

2010-07-26T15:07:00+03:00

Since I have Rockbox on a couple of my PMPs, I like to use the log scrobbler function and when I'm near my computer I can just submit my listened tracks history to Libre.fm. To do that, I use a little program called QtScrobble.

Unfortunately, there aren't any QtScrobble packages in the Fedora repositories, so I decided to build one myself.

A little word of caution here: this is the first RPM package I have ever built, so I can't know if it has any destructive capacities. All I can vouch for is that it works on my 32-bit Fedora 13 system.

Also, I haven't really figured out if the dependencies are correctly detected and installed. If not, you will require Qt4, libcurl and libmtp to be able to run QtScrobbler.

Anyhow, to cut the story short, you can grab the RPM from here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?0a4bawadcgzceqr.

In case anyone else needs it, I have also uploaded the Source RPM (SRPM) package, get it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?g4gll2tfomx88t6

Any feed-back will be greatly appreciated. Enjoy!

Note: I've also tested the package on OpenSUSE 11.3 and it works. YMMV :)

My Linux SopCast runner script

2010-06-01T13:33:00+03:00

Even though I'm not a TV guy, I sometimes feel the need to watch TV. I don't actually have a TV of my own, so I'm forced to use different kinds of streaming frameworks. One of these frameworks is SopCast, and although they provide Linux binaries, the GUI isn't the most well-designed. They do have a terminal version that makes a stream accessible on a local port, which can be viewed in basically any player.

To make this terminal version a little more friendly, I wrote a little script that starts up sp-sc-auth, leaves it a little while to buffer, then runs vlc, directly opening the stream. When you've closed vlc, sp-sc-auth is automagically killed too.

Here it is:

#!/bin/sh
sp-sc-auth sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/6001 6555 7010 > /dev/null &
sleep 5
vlc http://localhost:7010/tv.asf > /dev/null &
kill_sp_sc=`jobs -l | grep sp-sc-auth | awk '{print $2}'`
wait_for_vlc=`jobs -l | grep vlc | awk '{print $2}'`
wait $wait_for_vlc
kill $kill_sp_sc

Of course, you'll need to install sp-sc-auth yourself, and you'll also need to use the sopcast broker address for the channel of your choice. I keep a directory full of this kind of scripts, one for each channel I want to see. Enjoy!

A crispy umpc distro it is

2010-02-05T20:58:00+02:00

Since I got my Asus eee I've been continually swapping distros, since the preinstalled Xandros wasn't cutting it. Until now I've had Ubuntu, Ubuntu-eee, eeebuntu, Mandriva, Debian... and the list could go on.

Nothing to say, all great, stable & clean distros. And then came crunchbang, with it's spinoff cruncheee. Watch this:

The install iso is smaller than 500 megs, so it really lost some fat compared to the other distros. The installation is quick and painless, thanks to Ubiquity (Ubuntu's installer, since crunchbang is a derivative of Ubuntu).

After you install you get a lean and mean sistem, with a minimal suite of apps. Personally I don't like to use a standalone mail client, a clipboard manager and some other applets, so Clawsmail, Parcellite and some other stuff was out. Also, I replaced the NetworkManager applet with Wicd.

Still, after adding some stuff to the tray, like the software keyboard leds, it still used 128 megs of ram, which is great.

The keyboard shortcuts are absolutely great, and the list in conky makes for a steep learning curve.

I also updated all the apps, added the build-essential package, abiword for minimal text editing, gimp for photo editing and FBReader for e-books and the install size is about 1.3Gb.

So, if you fancy my office-oriented crunchbag/cruncheee remix (well, at least for the time dropbox will put up with me), get it here:

cruncheee-8.10.01.i386fmbuild.iso

cruncheee-8.10.01.i386fmbuild.iso.md5

Flash Drive Web Browser Stress Test

2010-02-05T20:57:00+02:00

Recently I had some unvoluntary fun concerning one of my flash drives. After that I decided to encrypt a part of my Portable Apps Suite that I keep on it, mainly the web browser, Pidgin, PuTTy and WinSCP, the sensitive stuff.

Playing with TrueCrypt I observed that it is able to show how much was read/written from the encripted drive in a session - a potential tool to see how much can a web browser stress a flash drive.

So I devised a simple set of tests to compare Portable Firefox and Opera@USB.

I optimised the browsers as much as possible for flash drive operation (no disk cache, limited back/forward entries).

The first test was just to plug in the drive, let geek.menu mount the encrypted container, fire up the browser from the menu, wait 'till the drive led stops blinking, close the driver, wait again. These were the results:

(Top - Opera, Bottom - Firefox)

As you can see, Firefox read about four times more data than Opera and wrote about 18 times more. Clearly, Opera's executable is well packed and optimised.

Then I browsed using both Firefox and Opera through a series of websites I picked, trying to have some diversity. So, these are the sites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVeEMrXGMww
http://acid3.acidtests.org/
http://blogdeaberat.wordpress.com/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11537792/ubuntu-pocket-guide-v11
http://ubuntu.ro/
http://friendfeed.com/public?format=atom
http://gpl.internetconnection.net/vi/

No surprises here:

(Top - Opera, Bottom - Firefox)

As you can see, Opera barely scratched the drive, it just loaded itself and saved cookies probably. Firefox on the other side got about 40 megs of data, and put back nearly as much.

Now, if you count in that Opera also has a (limited) torrent client, feed reader, e-mail client, irc client, built-in sync capability and also the widget engine that I never use, it is a great tool to carry around.

Firefox is the memory hog that we all know and the xulrunner framework that allows you to run the myriad of add-ins is great for a desktop computer, but the performance penalty is quite big to make a for a enjoyable portable experience.

Quick audio conversion script

2010-02-05T20:56:00+02:00

Wow, I haven't been here in a while. Anyhow, since I'm playing quite alot with mobile phones, I needed a way to convert my podcasts to a less space consuming format. And since all of them support HE-AAC, I wrote a small wrapper script that can convert almost any format accepted by mplayer to m4a (aac audio in am mp4 container). Grab it below!

#!/bin/sh
mplayer -quiet -vo null -vc null -ao pcm:waveheader:file="/tmp/$$.wav" -af resample=48000:0:1 "$1"
normalize-audio --peak "/tmp/$$.wav"
aacplusenc "/tmp/$$.wav" /tmp/$$.aac "$3"
MP4Box -new -no-sys -sbrx -add /tmp/$$.aac "$2"
rm -f /tmp/$$.aac /tmp/$$.wav``

In Ubuntu you will need to get the following packages:

mplayer (of course)
aacplusenc from medibuntu
normalize-audio
gpac (for MP4Box)

Also, as you can see, I had mplayer convert the audio to a 48kHz sampling rate - that's because aacplusenc would convert the audio to that sampling rate anyways, and I trust mplayer's conversions to be more accurate.

I could probably use pipes between the programs so less temporary data is written to disk, but it works pretty fast this way and I'm pretty lazy...

Let's get to usage: just copy the stuff above to a file, let's say tomp4.sh, then open a terminal and do a chmod +x ./tomp4.sh. To use it simply call it from a terminal like this: ./tomp4.sh infile.mp3 outfile.m4a bitrate. I mostly use a bitrate of 24 kbps for podcasts and 48kbps for music.

Enjoy!

Linux, Alsa, Skype and audio capture

2010-02-05T20:54:00+02:00

Although I'm not a regular Skype user, I still employ it from time to time to do my share of VoIP. But it happens quite often that I don't get any audio from my microphone, although incoming sound works just fine and all the alsamixer switches and gains are set properly. But, on both of my Intel HD Audio equipped laptops this trick seems to solve the audio capture problem just fine:

First, open a terminal and do a

sudo alsactl store

Then open /var/lib/alsa/asound.state in an editor (you'll need super-user privileges, a sudo nano /var/lib/alsa/asound.state in the same terminal you used for the last step will do) and look for something like:

control.12 {
        comment.access 'read write'
        comment.type BOOLEAN
        comment.count 2
        iface MIXER
        name 'Capture Switch'
        value.0 false
        value.1 false
}

The numbers might differ, but the name 'Capture Switch' line is a clear indicator that you've found the right control. Once you find it, change the two value lines to true, so you end up with

value.0 true
value.1 true

Then, Ctrl-O to save your file and then Ctrl-X to exit nano (just save the file if you're using a different editor). Back to the console for a final command:

sudo alsactl restore

Now you're free to ring up echo123 and test out your new settings. Hope it helps!

Mp3 To Mp4plus script update

2010-02-05T20:54:00+02:00

This is just an update to the script I posted a while ago over here. It works the same, has the same requirements, it's just a bit more user friendly. Refer to the original post for details, grab the script below.

#!/bin/sh
if [ $# -lt 3 ]then
  echo Usage: $0 \<infile\> \<outfile\> \<bitrate\>
else
  mplayer -quiet -vo null -vc null -ao pcm:waveheader:file="/tmp/$$.wav" -af resample=48000:0:1 "$1"
  normalize-audio --peak "/tmp/$$.wav"
  aacplusenc "/tmp/$$.wav" /tmp/$$.aac "$3"
  MP4Box -new -no-sys -sbrx -add /tmp/$$.aac "$2"
  rm -f /tmp/$$.aac /tmp/$$.wav
fi

Enable mp3 ringtones on Motorola W490/W510

2010-02-05T20:53:00+02:00

Just in case you have one of those pesky Motorola W490 or W510 mobile phones that can't use an mp3 file as a ringtone because your network provider doesn't want to let you do that, well, you can. And you won't have to reflash your phone just to do that, a simple seem edit is enough to do the trick. I won't go over the whole theory of seem editing, if you're not familiar with that, there are plenty of forums and websites on which the process is explained.

The seem in question is 0032_0001, at offset 0xC7 you will find a 0x00 value (or at least that was the value in the particular firmware version that my phone had). All you have to do is a little bit manipulation and enable bit 2. The new value is 0X04, and it did the trick for me. If you're using XVI32 to edit the file, it should go like this:

I couldn't find this particular seem modification documented anywhere, so I hope it might be useful for someone. Happy modding!

Later Edit: The initial values might differ, but I have confirmed that bit 2 needs to be enabled for MP3's to be applied as ringtones.

ASUS WL-AM604G NARS-enabled firmware

2010-02-05T20:52:00+02:00

If you have an ASUS WL-AM604G (A hardware variant) ADSL Wireless router, than you are probably accustomed to rebooting it everytime your connection fails and your ISP returns an invalid username/password error. Fortunately, the sources for this router's Linux-based firmware are available, and a group of russian modders have made some serious modifications to a similar type of router produced by ASUS - the AM604, including a fix for this reconnect problem. They called it the NARS reconnect patch and, since the two devices are extremely similar, getting it to work on the WL-AM604G posed no problems at all. This modified firmware had been running for more than a month on my router without any problems whatsoever, so I decided to make it available to anyone who wishes to use it. I have yet to clean up and release the modified source files, but I will do so upon request.

WARNING: The firmware update process isn't risk free. Although this firmware had been verified and it is known to work on my router, it is made available without any warranty. You are solely responsible to using it and any problems that might arise from that. Also, this firmware is ONLY compatilble with the A hardware variant.

If you haven't been frightened by the warning above, download the file linked below and open your router's administration panel. Go to the firmware update page and click the Choose button, then select the file you previously downloaded. The firmware update takes a couple of minutes, and there won't be any visible modifications or improvements to the way the administration panel looks and works. *It is advisable that the firmware update operation is carried out through an ethernet cable, since the wireless connection is less reliable.* **Bad flash recovery If you are certain that your router has ceased to function, follow these steps to recover it: **

Go to the ASUS support page and download an official firmware.
Turn off the router.
Push the reset button on the router with a thin object and hold it pressed wile you power on the router.
The Power LED should start to blink slowly. If it doesn't, resume from step 2.
Connect the computer to the router through an ethernet cable, and give it a 192.168.1.x IP, with 2<x<255, netmask 255.255.255.0.
Open a Command Prompt/CMD/terminal and change directory to where you downloaded the firmware. Run tftp -m binary 192.168.1.1 -c put nume_firmware.trx. There is no progress indication, so wait a couple of minutes for the operation to complete.
Stop and re-start the router, everything should be ok. If it doesn't, resume from step 2.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?y1am0jvwjkn
SHA1: 67f27458b97f711abcda928e15f7f385451435cf
MD5: 534f60677a5efe02817d2cb937d77a56
CRC32: 686797e6

Plucker to the masses

2008-12-26T08:35:00+02:00

Here's a little shell script I made to convert the html files in a directory to plucker format e-books:

#!/bin/sh
ORIGINAL_IFS=$IFS
IFS=$'\n'
for file in $1*.html; do
  plucker-build -f $2`basename $(echo $file|sed -e "s/ /\\\ /g") .html` file:$file
done
IFS=$ORIGINAL_IFS`

You call it like ./pluckerbatch.sh /source/dir/ /dest/dir/ - take care when writing the dir paths not to omit the trailing slashes as I did not compensate for them, the scripts expects them to be there.

As you can see, it's a very hackish approach made just to speed up a particular job, so it expects that the source dir only has html files (anything in that folder is sent to plucker-build) and it may have some problems. It should be safe when it encounters paths with spaces though...

I hope it'll be useful to someone else!