Hello does not allow sending multiple images at once.

These are pictures taken from CX65 during SC Global 2004 Mega Cruise yesterday.

SoundForge 7.0 does not support IMA ADPCM 16,000 kHz

SoundForge 7.0 is unable to create wave file suitable for CX65. However, version 5.0 does support!

DVP642K: A cheap DivX player

DVP642K is a cheap DivX player from Philips available in Thailand. It is only about 6,000 baht!!!

Wave file ringtone for cx65

Format: IMA ADPCM
Attributes: 16 kHz, 4 Bit, Mono

CX65

Eventually, I bought Siemens CX65 because many users reported lots of firmware bugs in C65 and wireless in X600 might not work perfectly with all IrDA. CX65 is more expensive than X600 just about 1000 baht so I decided to pay a little more to get the most stable mobilephone in the three candidates.

Siemens C65 or Samsung SGH-X600

I am making a decision to buy a mobilephone. There are 2 choices: C65 and X600. I like samsung but I don't like the external antenna. C65 seems to have better IrDA. X600 has a far better built-in VGA camera. I'm not sure that Easy Studio for X600 will work perfectly via IrDA on WinXP SP2.

However, I will buy one today!

Smileys plugin for Miranda Instant Messenger

Miranda Instant Messenger: "A plugin that adds smileys to the standard (split)message dialog.
Features:
- Customizable smiley support (for every protocol)
- Smiley 'selecttoolwindow' button during messaging
- Alpha blended icons support on Windows XP
- Plugin support
- Translation support"

Miranda Instant Messenger

Miranda Instant Messenger: "Miranda IM is a multi protocol instant messenger client.No bloat, it's Easy and Small! Miranda IM is designed to be resource efficient and easy to use. It uses very little memory and requires no installation. Just unzip and run! This also makes it ideal for users that want to run their messenger client from a removable storage such as an USB memory stick. It can even be stored on a floppy disc if not too many plugins are used.
It's all about plugins!The powerful plugin system makes Miranda IM extremely flexible. Only the most basic features are built in, but there are currently more than 200 plugins available for download that allows users to extend the functionality in Miranda IM. Plugins can be installed to add support for ICQ, AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, Gadu-Gadu, Tlen, Netsend and other protocols.

Miranda IM is published under the GPL license and is free of charge.

Miranda IM supports Windows NT4, 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP & 2003."

I have just moved from JAJC to Miranda. Smaller and faster!

Shared Image Viewer

Collaboration via AG: "The latest version of the shared image viewer application is now available for use. The new version operates with the AG 2.3 release. This release of the AG software uses new versions of python and wxPython. The application was essentially recreated from scratch. It now conforms to the new method of creating shared applications in that it uses the SharedAppClient that comes with the AG toolkit. Changes have been made in the new image viewer related to the version of wxPython specified in the AG 2.3 release."

Evolution of my mobilephone

	Sendo S200	Mitsubishi M320	Samsung C100
Type	Bar	Bar	Bar
Dimension	105 x 50 x 22 (98 g.)	115.5 x 47 x 19.9 (95 g.)	111 x 45 x 17 (76 g.)
Band	Dual	Dual	Dual
Stemina	360 hrs (210 mins)	350 hrs (240 mins)	145 hrs (180 mins)
Screen	96 x 64 B/W	TFT 128 x 141 4096	UFB 128 x 128 65536
Handfree	Built-in	Built-in	N/A
Ringtone	Monotone	64 Poly	40 Poly + Voice
Camera	N/A	N/A	N/A
Infrared	N/A	Fast	Fast
Bluetooth	N/A	N/A	N/A
Thai	T9	T9	T9
Java	N/A	N/A	Yes
SMS	Yes	Yes	Yes
EMS	N/A	N/A	Yes
MMS	N/A	N/A	N/A
GPRS	N/A	8	Yes
WAP	N/A	1.2.1	1.2.1
Modem	N/A	Built-in	Built-in

Goodbye SGH-C100

After using Samsung SGH-C100 for about 6 months, it have gone forever. Today, I was driving my car and last time called it. I took it on my lap after hanged up. I drived for a while and got out of the car to get a thing in back door. Unfortunately, it fell down to the ground without any sound crack.

Suddenly when I noticed it was not in my pocket, I tried to call them hopelessly someone received and told me to get it back. I was really sad, nobody received in the first call. However, my phone had been turned off in the second call. Goodby my C100.

NontriNet is still unconnectable!

I still don't know why. What I only know is this weekend is a long weekend. Today is a holiday so it might be unconnectable until tomorrow???

What's happening to NontriNet

I have been unable to connect to NontriNet for 3 hours. What???

Calculating ratio for very strick tracker

In order to prevent cheating peer in closed tracker, there is a very easy solution to solve this problem. However, it might be too strick.

Problem: Some clients do not even try to contact tracker but they are still able to leech using historical peers information.
Solution: Count amount of download by size of the torrent immediately when download its metadata
Advantage: Disable cheating of unreporting clients
Disadvantage: Downloading only some files may not fair

Interesting tracker's promotions

BT is very popular and some trackers do not allow non-member to leech from them to guarantee share ratio of the whole system. Below are interesting promotions for closed tracker.

1. Bonus credit - give extra upload by amount of snatched


2. Delay - do not allow low ratio users to leech new torrents


3. Golden time - turn off delay and count download only a half

In addition, many users have tried to cheat the counting system. It is mostly impossible to prevent cheating due to BT protocol. That means tracker must track not only share ratio, but also list of who want to leech and who finished each torrent for cross checking.

Okay. Now I can see the transparent layer which is actually menubar.

Eventually, I have installed Windows Media Player 10! Actually, I don't like its new user interface. As you might notice in the screenshot, I tried to capture its window but there are still some transparent border.

Having car is such a painful

Today, I brought my car to a garrage to only change lubricants. Unfortunately, the technician told me to replace about 12 parts. They cost about 17,000 baht!

BitTornado 0.3.8 is now out

BitTornado: "LATEST VERSION: 0.3.8
WHAT'S NEW:

maintenance release
works better with XP SP2
some bugs fixed
GUI width problem known, will be fixed later
randomized port selection"

I have successfully merged changes made in this version into CVS.

HTTP 404 The page senses that you are too stupid

HTTP 404 The page senses that you are too stupid: "HTTP 404 Request Is Too Stupid
Internet Explorer"

Great!

Getting ready to join next mega cruise!

Boo 0.4.3 - python-like language for .NET/Mono

[ANN] Boo 0.4.3 - python-like language for .NET/Mono: "you can add or delete methods from a class instance on the fly. Boo, however is more like C# and does most of its work at compile-time"

Boo is faster than IronPython.

What is Mono?

What is Mono?: "Mono is a comprehensive open source development platform based on the .NET framework that allows developers to build Linux and cross-platform applications with unprecedented productivity. Mono's .NET implementation is based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Infrastructure."

Omnividea FOBS - FFMpeg C & JMF Bindings

Omnividea FOBS - FFMpeg C & JMF Bindings provides ffmpeg interface to java JMF

BTQueue 0.0.17 has been released

Due to some minor bugs in 0.0.16, I decided to release this version to fix those bugs. Furthermore, sourceforge got some problems yesterday. No one can download.

Link: BTQueue

Bugs in 0.0.16

I've got bug reports of version 0.0.16. Most of them are unnecessary error message, e.g. scrape error due to network failed. Another bug relates to incompatibility of Popen4 on windows since I changed from popen to Popen4.

I plan to release 0.0.17 which is a minor bug fix version very soon. Keep your eyes on btqueue!.

BTQueue 0.0.16 at freshmeat

BTQueue 0.0.16 on the front page of freshmeat.

O'Reilly Network: Seven Cool Mono Apps

Seven Cool Mono Apps by Edd Dumbill -- Edd Dumbill takes a look at seven of the cool open source programs being built on Mono. It seems like Mono is getting ready for production development.

Converting Between Binary and Decimal in Perl

Recipe 2.4. Converting Between Binary and Decimal: "To convert a Perl integer to a text string of ones and zeros, first pack the integer into a number in network byte order[1] (the 'N' format), then unpack it again bit by bit (the 'B32' format)."

sub dec2bin {

    my $str = unpack("B32", pack("N", shift));

    $str =~ s/^0+(?=\d)//;   # otherwise you'll get leading zeros

    return $str;

}



sub bin2dec {

    return unpack("N", pack("B32", substr("0" x 32 . shift, -32)));

}

Bookmarks Synchronizer

Mozilla Update :: Extensions -- More Info: Bookmarks Synchronizer is a tool for synchronizing your bookmarks at home and anywhere like office with internet access.

I have tested QEMU on Knoppix 3.6 with japanese localization. Cool! I didn't configure anything but network worked fine. Text-mode speed was not too bad but too slow in graphics mode.

Google Labs Aptitude Test

Google Blog is a test for anyone who wants to join Google team.

BTQueue 0.0.16 on the front page

BTQueue 0.0.16 has been announced at the front page of sourceforge.net.

Firefox 1.0PR

Eventually, I switched to firefox since my colleages have switched. I also installed its extensions, e.g. JustBlogIt, UltraBar, Autofill, and Tabbrowser Preferences.

SCMSWeb as a replacement of MDS for job scheduling problem

Since MDS2 is very unstable and SQMS/G relies on it, sometimes SQMS/G can't get available resources due to timeout in MDS itself. To temporarily fix this problem, we decided to extend SCMSWeb to act like a MDS especially for SQMS/G.

To activate this function, you have to upgrade SCMSWeb to the newest version in CVS. Note that you have to upgrade all SCMSWeb instance in the grid. Next step, you have to specify your scheduler for job monitoring module in /etc/sce/sce.conf as follows.

[jobmon]
scheduler = sqms

Now SCMSWeb only supports SQMS, SGE, MDS, and RSL. If you are using other scheduler, you can use MDS or RSL if globus supports it. Actually, MDS and RSL are very similar but MDS may contain remote information.

In order to use MDS, you have to specify mds_host, mds_port, and mds_basedn in mds group.

[mds]
mds_host = mds.thaigrid.net
mds_port = 2135
mds_basedn = mds-vo-name=thai,o=grid

For RSL, it is necessary to specify globus_location and scheduler_type in jobmon group.

[jobmon]
globus_location = /usr/grid
scheduler_type = pbs

Note that both MDS and RSL does not provide full information like native drivers such as SQMS and SGE.

In SQMS, I introduces new resource information plug-in for retrieving queue status from specified URL. If you want to activate this plug-in, please change option allhost_source in group sqms or queue's group to liburlrinfo.so. Moreover, specify option queue_url in form %scmsweb_cgiurl%/queue_mon.cgi by replacing %scmsweb_cgiurl% with cgi url specified to SQMSWeb at installation time (contact your admin). Default value is http://localhost/cgi-bin/scmsweb/queue_mon.cgi.

[sqms]
allhost_source = liburlrinfo.so
queue_url = http://observer.thaigrid.net/cgi-bin/scmsweb/queue_mon.cgi

Daemon/Remote in BTQueue 0.0.16

Since 0.0.16 introduces many new features, I am trying to explain how to use it efficiently. The most requested feature is to run it in daemon/service mode. Prior to this version, you (and me) have to run btqueue incorperately with screen to make it run likely in background. Actually, only some of you might want this feature and all of them run btqueue on his/her server placed at ISP. BTQueue perfectly fit the need of administrators for remotely leech/seed on share server or office.

Today, you don't need screen anymore. All you want is just btqueue! However, old style btqueue is still preserved for short-term running. To run it as a daemon in the background, you have to specify daemon command.

$ btqueue.py daemon

After that, you will immediately return to prompt. Now you are ready to control btqueue anywhere by running command below:

$ btqueue.py remote

By default, btqueue.py will bind itself on localhost (127.0.0.1) to make it more secure. However, sometimes you might want to control it from anywhere. In this case, please change global setting xmlrpc_ip to 0.0.0.0 or another more specific ip. As you should already know, there are 2 ways to modify setting; 1) directly modify policy.conf and 2) call gset command in the btqueue's prompt.

>>> gset xmlrpc_ip 0.0.0.0

After modification, restarting is needed.

In remote control mode, you can do whatever you used to do. Note that notifications such as start and terminate are disabled in this mode. Moreover, quiting in this mode will not terminate its daemon. In case of you want to shut down the daemon gracefully, you have to run kill command instead.

BTQueue 0.0.16 is out!

I proundly release BTQueue 0.0.16 (build 240). This version is the major change to improve both functionality and comfortability. You can get it at sourceforget.

Constructing a site board is painful

Today, I have bought a site board to place in my new room. It is so heavy (net wg. 40 kg). It took more than 3 hours to construct and it has not finished yet. The last pieces are to mount magnet to little door. I plan to buy a mini component very soon to put it in this site board.

Graphics Editor

Due to picasa can't modify image, I have to find another solution. What I want is just a small graphics editor that let me select a region in various form, rectangle, circle, or free form, and clear it to background color. This feature is very useful for posting screenshot with some private information. I found that Brush Strokes 1.01 meet my requirements. Its size before extracting is about 600 KB and 3 MB after extracting. However, as you could see it now, it is not a "good looking" program. Anyway, I will try to use it for a while.

Antivirus review

NOD32, in my opinion, is the best antivirus in term of performance and virus information. It is significantly faster than Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro, or even Kaspersky.

QEMU for Windows and Knoppix

QEMU is a processor emulator developed firstly on linux and later ported to windows. It allows to run windows on linux or linux on windows. This feature is very useful for linux live cd, e.g. Knoppix, to let me run linux without rebooting windows. However, it is slower than commercial emulator like virtual pc or vmware. Booting knoppix on qemu on windows is easy as single click.

Working with MindMap

I am heavily using mindmap in my work, for example, technical paper, project presentation, meeting report and many more. There are many mindmap software to help creating and maniputing map in mind to reality in monitor. The first one is FreeMind written in java. It is very small in size but consumes huge memory (java vm). The best thing of FreeMind is that it is totally free for all and also includes sources (if you care). Another choice is MindManager which is a popular commercial mindmap software. It allows you to change style of line, node, and layout. Furthermore, you can export your map to powerpoint for quickly presentation in professional looking. In other words, it can also export the map to a document including your note. The output document is almost ready to submit as a technical paper! In addition, it supports task assignment like MS project and can synchronize with MS outlook. Cool!

Deploying tomcat and SQL 2000 on Windows Server 2003

This afternoon I deployed tomcat 5.0.28 and SQL 2000 SP3 on a Windows Server 2003. It took a while to download all of them via slow link. Fortunately, j2sdk is already available. WS 2003 consumes about 300 MB RAM at steady state.

Note that in order to run tomcat as a NT service, it provides service.bat in bin directory to install the service automatically. To install, just run:

service install

And, to uninstall:

service remove

After that, I am able to start it by running "net start Tomcat".

Solution for remotely building distribution for btqueue

Eventually, I use cvsnt combining with openssh for windows as I mentioned earlier. Usually, I use TortoiseCVS but in this case, Tortoise doesn't work at all because it needs to interact via GUI. However, openssh is used as the ssh client for cvsnt only. Actual ssh server is WinSSHD which is much more easier to make it work on winxp sp2.

OpenSSH for Windows is incompatible with SP2

After installing 3.8.1p1-1 downloaded today, everything seems to work perfectly. Unfortunately, I can't find opensshd service in service list. I also tried to "net start opensshd" at prompt but no luck at all. It's the time to find another solution.

OpenSSH for Windows

Since I am having to release BTQueue 0.0.16 very soon, I am looking for a way to remotely create distribution on windows machine at office from my home. OpenSSH for Windows could be used here. It promises to allow running as a service at startup. However, this version, 3.8p1-1 20040709, was compiled on cygwin. It must be slow comparing to linux version.

SSHWebProxy - SSH via HTML

SSHWebProxy is a very interesting project aimed to enable users to access SSH shell and SSH file transfer using a web browser. It runs on JBoss.

SpeedswitchXP 1.4

SpeedswitchXP is a battery optimized applet for winxp. It provides customizable policies to slow down processor speed for saving notebook run longer than normal policy controlled by winxp itself.

Testing hello

My Photo?
This is a test posting instant image using Hello. It is so easy but I don't know how to remove it. At this time, I know why hello should be used, it allows me to upload screenshot of current window or even the whole screen with single click! I love it.

QEMU CPU Emulator

QEMU CPU Emulator is a fast processor emulator. It claims to run winxp on linux host. I will try it very soon to make a win32 build machine for BTQueue.

SSH clients review

PuTTY was my most favorite ssh client for windows. However, it was unusable for a week without any error messages while other clients work fine. I noticed that the problem should be router setting at border gateway in my university. That's why I have to find a new client. PuTTY comes with sftp support but only text version available right now.

SSH Client has been widely used in my office because of its free license for educational use and its rich functionalities. Unfortunately, it seems so slow comparing to PuTTY. The biggest problem is that it does not support font encoding other than default one (ISO-8859-1 or latin-1). Another problem is HOME and END button do not work at all because it supports only a few terminal (no xterm and Linux). The best thing of ssh is that it cached passphrase for another concurrent session and also sftp.

SecureCRT is my current ssh client. It is fast and fully support publickey authentication based on key pair generated by openssh. SecureFX could be used as a sftp client sharing cached passphrase with SecureCRT. This feature looks like one available in SSH client but it is more powerful with synchronize button.

Day of Debugging

BTQueue 0.0.16 is going to be ready very soon. It is being tested by developer teams to download bittorrents from various trackers automatically. Today, BTQueue allows user to define aliases with unlimited substitution in each group. In additional, user-defined tracker allows user to dynamicly define pattern of tracker for automatic crawling via cron. For bandwidth shapping, it introduces new algorithm, I called it fair-share, to distribute transfer rate to all session in balance fashion. This action applies to both upload and download. Furthermore, seed rate is activated. In contrast, global upload rate = seed rate + upload rate.
SCMSWeb has been modified to announce resource manager contact string of each queue to its xml. This feature will be used in SQMS to replace MDS. Current, MDS is implemented by OpenLDAP which is very unstable for WAN and especially grid. The most problems are inadequate bandwidth and too high latency that lead to missing information due to timeout error.