A few more audio tools

The last time I looked at Capturing streaming audio was back on 2005-06-27. I am not the only one looking into this topic Swen’s Weblog [1] shows a few new techniques, but he hasn’t tried some of the tools that I am using.

I am very happy with NetTransport for the stream capture, but some of my other tools could do with an update.

Switch Sound File Conversion Software
Conversion from RA to MP3 has been an on going problem. This product does it well, and there is a freeware version! Available from NCH

 

[1.] How to download Real Audio streams and convert Real Audio to MP3 [Swen's Weblog]
[2.] Convert Real Audio files to MP3s [Mac OS X Hints]
[3.] Converting Real Audio to MP3 (fast) [dbpowerAmp Forum]

Chritsmas

On Boxing day, BBC7 had their Narnia Day: The Magician’s Nephew; The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe; The Horse and His Boy; Prince Caspian. Available for 7 days from the listen again service.

This was certainly a good lead in to tonight’s showing of Narnia:The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe at Cameo Cinemas (Belgrave) in the out door cinema.

 

The kid’s trampoline up and bouncing in the backyard

 

Kira’s sunflower deciding to add some brightness

HP Evo 500 issues

Answers to some questions about the Compaq Evo 500’s we are selling …

A.) DirectX Version
The current version of DirectX is 9.0c(2005-DEC update), your machine will most likely have DirectX 9.0c without the DEC-2005 update. A correctly written game that requires DirectX 9.0b should work with 9.0c.

“DirectX (December 2005) improves the graphics, security, and performance of your operating system. Download and install this update for your Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, or Windows XP-based system.” [1.]

DX Diag, a good tool for determining you DirectX version and capability Image2, Image 3.

B.) Video Card
The ’spooge driver not found’ may not really be a problem with your version of DirectX; it may be an issue with the graphics card or graphics card driver;

“what you should do is make sure you graphics card is up to date and fits the system requirements this shuold sort the problem”” [2.]

“Symptoms: Game won’t start, error message stating that “spooge driver not found, verify that directX is installed” is displayed. Problem: Your graphics card is not being initialized correctly by the game.”” [3.]

The Evo500 computer that you have purchased uses an NVidia Vanta AGP graphics card. This card does not have Direct3D acceleration or AGP texture acceleration, and as such may not be suitable for these games (this would need to be checked with the games vendors).

“Cards that will run Dawn of War
-ATI Radeon 8500 and above
-Nvidia Geforce 2 and above
Cards that will not run Dawn of War
-Intel integrated graphics chips
-S3 chip family of integrated cards
-Matrox Parhelia family” [3.]

You *may* be able to get some better performance by using newer drivers [4, 5], but as these are corporate specifiaction machines rather than “gaming” machines you may need to upgrade the enitre graphics card to get these games to run in a suitable manner. A suitable graphics card would be available for $50-$80 range.

C.) 4 x CD-ROM drive
The drives installed in the Evo500 are HighSpeed CDR/W units and as such will deal with 4x easily.

D.) USB
The USB ports in the Evo500 are 1.x (USB 1.1 from memory) and are not USB2.0. To use USB 2.0 you would need to add a PCI USB2.0 card to your system.

 

[1.] Microsoft Direct X
[2.] Directx_9.0c PROBLEMS!!!!!!! (1/1)
[3.] Spooge Driver Problem? Solution Here
[4.] HP Software & Drivers
[5.] HP Software & Drivers Evo 500

A SYDNEY CHRISTMAS CAROL (?)

	A SYDNEY CHRISTMAS CAROL (?)
	Rudolf the Rednosed Redneck, {Redneck}

 had a very shiny beach {like a shopping mall}


	And if you ever visit, {visit}

 the Police will make it hard to reach {zero tolerance}


	All of the other Rednecks, {Rednecks}

 like to shout and call people names {oi you lebo!}


	They never let poor 'musaf' {musaf}

 join in any redneck games {like surfing}


	Then one muggy December Eve, {it's hot}

 Jonesey's broadcast said ... {blah, blah, blah}


	"gather on the beach you lads,

 we'll go and thump some heads tonight"


	Then all the Rednecks loved it, {loved it}

 and they ozi ozi ozi'ed with glee {yippee}


	Rudolf the rednosed Redneck, {Redneck}

 you'll go down in infamy! {!}

‘Message from Iraq’

Personal Home Pages on staff.edfac.unimelb.edu.au

Personal Home Pages on staff.edfac.unimelb.edu.au

Staff users with edfac accounts are able to host personal home pages on the system.

To enable this you must make a sub-directory of your home directory named public_html.

$ mkdir $HOME/public_html

Files placed inside this directory are then accessible via a URL like: http://staff.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/~username/filename.html

You will need to make sure your file permissions are set to allow everyone read access, and your directory permissions are set to allow everyone execute access.

$ chmod o+x $HOME $HOME/public_html
$ chmod o+r $HOME $HOME/public_html/*

A file named index.html is searched for in a directory and served up for URLs ending in a slash.

 Note: IT staff can use *.shtml as they are served slightly differently

  [1] http://staff.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/ [EDFAC]

Endpoint network management project

Endpoint network management project

The Endpoint network management project seeks to deliver improved network services to the University through the consolidation of network management under the Information Division. The project’s scope encompasses University-owned, Parkville-based Local Area Network (LAN) infrastructure.

The project is built upon recommendations made in the Gartner Review of the University’s IT landscape and subsequent Ramsay document, that the centralization of network management would provide for:

• More effective support of enterprise applications that rely upon the network infrastructure;
• More cost effective delivery of services (through economies of scale achieved in skillsets and technologies implemented and the consolidation of toolkits); and
• An improved ability to adopt existing technologies (such as Voice over IP telephony) and be more agile in adopting technologies in the future.

The project will seeks service expectations from clients, create processes that align with these expectations, and refine these with the experience and feedback received through pilots. The project will also create costing and funding models for consideration by the University to meet the requirements of the clients.

The timeline of the project is:

• Phase 1 (Beginning June 2005):
  • Establishment of implementation group from faculty/departmental IT staff to seek faculty requirements.
  • Scope requirements of processes and toolsets required to support faculty/department requirements.
  • Draft cost and funding models considering, in particular, staffing requirements for the University.
• Phase 2 (Expected to begin February 2006):
  • Pilot with multiple faculties/departments.
  • In depth survey of equipment of remaining faculty/departmental LANs.
  • The project will then pass responsibility to the Network and Telecommunications team for the implementation across remaining faculties and departments.

[1] Endpoint network management project [UNIMELB-Information Management Plan]
[2] Ramsay Report [UNIMELB]

Oracle Calendar – Group View [2]

A bit of a workaround from Fridays problem. It’s not a total solution, but hitting OK (or the tick) with just the ‘g:’ or “r:’ listed in the input box gives a better search box from which you can choose your Group/Resource without having to memorise the name

Wildcard via grp: (g:)

Wildcard via r: (res:)

This will have to do until we can get the Group button back.

 

[1] Oracle Calendar [Oracle]

Oracle Calendar – Group View

Remember the Oracle Calendar Client update I’ll just check my Calendar … (2005-11-17)? It appears that there are a few too many changes for some our clients out there in userland. The biggest issue so far is the handling of “Group View”

The before view showing the Group button

” Enter the name of a user, group or resource in the Add member field and select the Checkmark button. Resources must be preceded by r:, re: or res:. Groups must be preceded by g:, gr: or grp:. If you do not know the name of a user, group or resource, click the Search button. “

The Manage Group Window

… but don’t expect to be able to ’send’ the result of the search to the ‘Open Group View’ window, we have regressed to having to type this in (!?)

THE GROUP VIEW
(Oracle Calendar Help File)

The Group View enables you to view the daily schedules of multiple users and resources at one time. Use the Group View to quickly find a suitable meeting time based on the schedules of the invitees and availability of resources.

Selecting users or resources for a Group View

1. Click the Open Group Agenda button on the Agenda toolbar.
2. Enter the name of the user, group or resource you want to include in the Group View in the Add field. Group names must be preceded by g:, gr: or grp: and resource names must be preceded by r:, re: or res:. You can also click the Search button to search the directory.
3. Click the Checkmark button.
4. Click OK when you finish adding all the users, groups and resources you want to include in this Group View.

Viewing the Group View results
The Combined column displays the combined availability of the users and resources included in the Group View. Unavailable time is marked in red. The other columns show the individual Day Views of the users and resources.

If you want to exclude a user or resource’s availability from the Combined column, deselect the check box beside the user or resource’s name.

To add or delete a user or resource from the Group View:

1. Click the Modify Group View button on the second toolbar. The Modify Group View dialog box opens.
2. If you want to add users or resources to the Group View, enter their names and click the Checkmark button.
   If you want to delete users or resources from the Group View, select their names and click Delete.
3. Click OK when you are finished. Depending on what you did in step 2, the users and resources are either added to or deleted from the Group View.

Scheduling a meeting for all users and resources in the Group View
You can create a meeting directly from the Group View by selecting and double-clicking a block of time in the Combined column. The users and resources in the Group View are automatically added to the list of attendees. See Creating a meeting entry for more detailed instructions on how to create a meeting.

 

  A distinct lack of a GROUP button!

 

 

 

[1] Oracle Calendar [Oracle]

An arm full of badges

Our Cub pack has broken up for the Christmas holidays, and tonight was our ‘awards night’ where we handed out our achievement badges

An arm full of badges!

Kira managed;
Cooking (1st Level)
Animals & Birds (1st Level)
Entertainer (1st Level)
Gardener (1st Level)
Swimmer (1st Level)
Codes & Signals (1st Level)
World Conservation

Holy smokin’ hard drives Batman! A Direct Cable Connection!

Well it all started with a machine compromise last week; “Is that a Digital Celebris FX? I thought we’d thrown them out a few years back!” It appears some areas hadn’t This motheaten PC is now also infected with a few of script-kiddy-land’s more *interesting* outputs and is compromised.

The machine is running W2K and has a 2GB hardrive, no USB, won’t load a Firewire card due to confilcts, can’t boot from a CD … I’m thinking about dropping it from the rooftop “Sorry, hard drive crashed can’t get the data”

Shaun then mentions the words that bring back memories of Win3.11 and the old Toshiba laptops with orange screens … “How about LapLink?”. I rumage in the compactus and drag out the cables, now how do we get there? We need to setup a DCC (Direct Cable Connection) between the two machines, and suprisingly this goes together pretty quickly.

 

Meet *JUNK* our LapLink target

Oh boy, is it slow! 19.2KBps

[1] Connecting, using a parallel cable, win98 and winxp [Annoyances.org]
[2] DCC Step-by-Step Setup For Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP [USBFIREINFO]