- luv-talk - luv.asn.au

Retrieval of data from an old tape
by Colin Fee 18 Nov '11

18 Nov '11

I'm posting this on behalf of a work colleague who has asked the following: "Good Morning, I have a request from <name withled> to retrieve some data from an old tape reel. It's on a Memorex MRX-V half inch 6250 BPI (bits per inch) magnetic tape reel. The tape contains data from his PHD. He has had it mounted once here at Monash on a Burroughs machine in 1990. At the time he viewed the data through his Vaxc account. Can anyone recommend a commercial service to retrieve the data, or have access to a functioning museum relic that might do the job?" If anyone has anything they can add please contact Greg directly (I've set the Reply-to: to his address). Regards, Colin Fee.

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Site access problem
by Rohan McLeod 14 Nov '11

14 Nov '11

Just looking for some diagnostic suggestions: Problem: When trying to access my Telstra mobile account info at: https://www.my.telstra.com.au/myaccount/overview on two different machines 1/ both machines running XP (apologies) 2/ both machines running SeaMonkey and InternetExplorer(fall back only) 3/ both machines machines with ethernet connection to Linksys E2000; on Iprimus 'Home Fibre StarterPlus' account In both SeaMonkey and IE: -machine 1: old slow desk-top accesses site OK -machine 2 eeePC laptop just sits with circling dots..forever any ideas welcome thanks Rohan McLeod

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Phone with QWERTY keyboard and Pinyin support
by Peter Ross 13 Nov '11

13 Nov '11

Hi all, do you know about a phone with QWERTY keyboard and Chinese Pinyin support available in Australia? Thanks for recommendations Peter

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Advice on how to fix an invalid EDID on projector
by Edward Savage 12 Nov '11

12 Nov '11

Evening all, Sorry if this should have gone to LUV-Main instead. I'm not sure how Linux related it will end up being. I'm looking for a little direction on an issue with an Acer P1266 projector which won't work with PC devices plugged in using HDMI. My knowledge of HDMI and all of its standards and uses is very limited but I understand I should be able to plug in a PC and have it just work. The issue is that the projector will just sit on HDMI without attempting to mode set when a computer is plugged in. I was under the impression that the HDMI port was just broken until fiddling with the HDMI caused it to set a mode once or twice. What it set was something unexpected like 480x360 48.36 hz @ 85 and after reading the available modes for HDMI in the projector manual I found this was not one of them. Remembering something about EDID information I thought that the port might not be broken and that something else might be happening. Windows and Lion have woeful verbosity when things break so I got out a trusty Ubuntu computer and hooked it up to the projector to see what it could see. Here is what I found in the Xorg.0.log http://pastebin.com/iXU86awD (note I fixed the Validated Modes being wrong resolution and device after taking this log). The Nvidia manual allowed me to remove the first clear issue which is the conflict with Horizontal Sync in Xorg like so... Section "Monitor" ... HorizSync 15.0 - 50.0 # a guess based on xorg log output Option "UseEdidFreqs" "false" EndSection This cleared up all errors except... [ 19.896] (WW) NVIDIA(0): ACER P1266 (DFP-0)'s EDID does not contain a maximum image [ 19.896] (WW) NVIDIA(0): size; cannot compute DPI from ACER P1266 (DFP-0)'s EDID. [ 19.896] (==) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (75, 75); computed from built-in default So I started reading into what EDIDs are and how to do anything with them. First priority seemed to be to get a copy and then work out how to fix this issue. Enter what I found when I output the EDID and parsed it http://pastebin.com/EtNtArfk I think this maybe the time to ask for some advice from some people who may have come across this before. The net gives me some suggestions but I've got no idea what to look into... * Continuing to look at how to modify the EDID that is there to set a maximum image size and load that EDID on the projector * Looking at taking the information I do have from the EDID and making an xorg conf that uses that * Not trusting the EDID source as advised by parse-edid Some extra notes: * The projector is out of warranty and Acer have never put out any updates for it. It was never very popular so it's entirely possible no one ever bothered fixing this issue. * Xorg.conf is totally stock standard with nothing strange apart from the above, I can include a copy if someone wishes to see it. * Xorg.0.log is totally normal beyond what's included in the above paste bin, I can include a copy of the entire thing if required. * I don't have any video devices that output to HDMI to test with as I believe this sends a separate EDID? * The PC devices can drive projector using analog connections. [1] http://pastebin.com/iXU86awD subset of xorg.0.log with stock standard xorg.conf [2] http://pastebin.com/EtNtArfk output of get-edid | parse-edid Thanks in advance if anyone has any experience with this, Edward

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phones
by Russell Coker 29 Oct '11

29 Oct '11

Virgin has the Galaxy 2, the Xperia X10, and the Xperia Arc (which is like the X10 but with more RAM and newer Android) for free on the $29 per month plan, they also have the first 3 months free which means you pay $25.38 per month on average over the 2 year contract. The $29 plan includes $450 of phone credit which at $1 per minute and $0.40 flag-fall means something like 360 minutes of calls per month - more than enough for most people. It also includes 250MB of data which is adequate for non-technical people and barely adequate for people like us if Wifi is used for Android market. This seems to be the best deal available now if you need to buy an Android phone. If you already own a phone then TPG and Amaysim are two of the better options. If anyone knows of a better deal then please let me know. A couple of my relatives will get Galaxy 2's on the Virgin $29 plan very soon if I can't find a better offer. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Re: [luv-talk] [luv-main] Some decent speakers for PC's
by Craig Sanders 25 Oct '11

25 Oct '11

i'm cc-ing this back to luv-talk (mostly because i hope someone knows of a decent - i.e. low tosser ratio - audio web site / forum). hopefully anyone replying will remember to cc their response to you. On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 11:04:43AM +1000, Lindsay Sprinter wrote: > The BX5a's are deffiniely better than the AV30's although they (the > AV30's) are no slouch (Note 1) MAudio also have a CX something. I > have not done a direct comparison with the Magnaplanars, this would > unlikely be a profitable exersize as experience has showed the they > will show up anything. I can't really justify spending over $400 on speakers. $150 is OK. maybe even $229 for the AV-40 if they were significantly better. but i doubt if i'd even notice or care about the difference betweeb $150 speakers and $400 speakers. given the bass requirements below, though, i'd even consider paying more for a separate subwoofer to place on the floor, especially if it was something i could add later if needed - but i haven't seen any for less than about $400. and if i bought one of those, how do i find out what's involved in setting it up - do i need some sort of splitter/filter to route the low freqs to the subwoofer and everything else to the monitors? am i better off with a separate amp and unpowered speakers? what i'd like to find is a web site for practical audio information without raving reviews by wanky audiophiles of $1000 gold-plated cable and similar ignorant-of-physics nonsense. > Note 1: Listening to music is one of the most subjective things on > this planet. The only real way is to listen to something to see if > some audio item suits you and what you listen to. yep, i know. i've got two main uses for speakers - listening to music, and playing games. for playing games, good bass is important for the explosions. for music, i've got eclectic but very selective tastes. Sturgeon's Law applies to music too. i mostly like ambient, trance, chill, various other forms of doof (so, again, bass is good), some classical and earlier music (have developed a liking for some medieval music and baroque guitar), some "world" music, also Dead Can Dance / Lisa Gerrard, and other stuff that provides complex entertainment/work for my brain's audio pattern recognition hardware. i like some rock and pop type music but despise most of it (even the best of it tends to be boringly simplistic), and i like individual pieces in all sorts of musical genres....pretty much anything except for C&W and the various metal sub-genres. i prefer instrumental music or music with lyrics in languages i don't understand so i don't have to know how banal the words are and can hear the voice as just another instrument. > If you search for subjective reports on the MAudio's you will find > plenty of support for how good they are. StoreDJ also had a large > stack of them in the shop both times I was there (around 1.25 metre > cube) so one would assume I am not the only one that thinks them OK. BTW, i noticed that storedj also has a BEHRINGER MS40 with optical spdif input for $209 - any idea if they're any good? https://www.storedj.com.au/products/BEH-MS40 craig -- craig sanders <cas(a)taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #205: Quantum dynamics are affecting the transistors

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who's up for a demonstration?
by Russell Coker 24 Oct '11

24 Oct '11

http://etbe.coker.com.au/2011/10/24/stop-hrl/ I attended the Stop HRL demonstration this afternoon. On Sunday the 13th of November there is a demonstration against the Baillieu government. Are any other LUV members planning to attend? We could form a "penguins against global warming" contingent. ;) -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Alex's OpenShot keyboard shortcut enhancement & Applied Code reading
by Rodney Brown 23 Oct '11

23 Oct '11

Alex's lightning talk on reading the python code of OpenShot to add a keyboard short cut reminded me of some of Diomidis Spinellis's blog posts - his IEEE Software "Tools of the Trade" columns, the latest of which are now available as podcasts http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/tools-of-the-trade Applied Code Reading: GNU Plotutils http://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20090811/index.html Applied Code Reading: Debugging FreeBSD Regex http://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20090916/ I think they may be from his book "Code reading: the open source perspective" http://books.google.com/books?id=8lYbNfsAVT4C&hl=en I should have read one post more closely "Process Substitution" was something I didn't know, advanced plumbing ... http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/advanced_bash_scripting_guide/proces… Chapter 22. Process Substitution Process substitution is the counterpart to command substitution. Command substitution sets a variable to the result of a command, as in dir_contents=`ls -al` or xref=$( grep word datafile). Process substitution feeds the output of a process to another process (in other words, it sends the results of a command to another command). Command substitution template command within parentheses >(command) <(command) His example follows.. To locate classes that call the method userGet, but don't call the method userRegister we process their source code with the following bash script. comm -23 \ <(find . -name \*.java -print0 | xargs -0 grep -l userGet | sort) \ <(find . -name \*.java -print0 | xargs -0 grep -l userRegister | sort) The script depends on a wonderful feature of the bash shell: the ability to make the output of a command appear as a file.

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"Conference" microphone
by Peter Ross 18 Oct '11

18 Oct '11

Hi all, I am looking for a (most likely USB attached) microphone that I can place in the middle of a table during a conference call. It should be able to capture everone's voice while she or he is up to 2 metres away. The problem is to have it here before Thursday. That rules out buying online, I think. I haven't been successful finding a shop here in Melbourne selling such item. Maybe one of you know a place? Thanks for help Peter

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Re: [luv-talk] [luv-main] help urgently needed tomorrow when I buy new hardware
by Tim Connors 18 Oct '11

18 Oct '11

On Mon, 17 Oct 2011, Russell Coker wrote: > On Mon, 17 Oct 2011, Chris Samuel <chris(a)csamuel.org> wrote: > > As for RAM - well Java is not known for its light memory limits, > > there's one Java code that's run at VLSCI that can fail if it > > gets less than 30GB or 60GB of RAM, but we believe that's because > > it's doing stupid things with its file IO. :-( > > There are also Java implementations on smart cards with RAM measured in > kilobytes. > > The RAM use is determined by what the application does and also by the garbage > collection system. Often people tune their JVM to not do GC very often to > save CPU time at the cost of using more RAM. > > One thing that's worth noting is that in many environments Java code is > written by people who don't know much about how computers work at a low level > (they are the people who can't write a C program that doesn't SEGV regularly), > so they tend not to be efficient with memory use. I think that Java gets a > bad reputation because of this. Is it possible to write a java gui that feels snappy? I've never seen one, but it could be due to the widget set being extremely high on overhead, or it could be due to people trying to do too much work in a single threaded application without yielding to the GUI often enough. Any examples of java software that doesn't suck? -- Tim Connors

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