iSpy is free at
http://www.ispyconnect.com/download.aspx

K-Lite is free at
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/k_lite_mega_codec_pack.htm

In my case iSpy outputs some ~300 1280×720 MP4 files per day, averaging some 6 GB. The source is a MS LifeCam Studio HD cam. It should be trivial to join them using one of the so called “video joiners”, but all fail, namely producing an output that can NOT be navigated.

I am still experimenting to find an appropriate workflow. My best candidate right now is converting the MP4s to “MS Compatible AVI” files using the free WinFF and then joining them using the commercial “Ultra Video Joiner“.

WinFF is free at
http://winff.org/html_new/downloads.html

Ultra Video Joiner can be bought at
https://www.regnow.com/checkout/cart/add/13185-12

Ultra Video Joiner beats all the “video joiner” alternatives I tried, and although it is not free, it does work.

Using the process below, the resulting file is much smaller (~500 MB) than the original partials, but seems to keep its quality and is usable, i.e., you can browse to any point in the timeline with no problems.

1) Use WinFF to convert from MP4 to:

AVI, MS Compatible AVI, forcing the “video size” to its original source value (of 1280×720 in my case) and “2 pass” in the “video” tab of the options.

2) Use “Ultra Video Joiner” to join the converted files.

After this, optionally,

3) Delete the converted partials.

4) Delete the original partials from iSpy.

5) Move the joined file to somewhere safe.

Unfortunately, the installer is not totally compatible with Windows 7 x64: it reports the install procedure to complete, when in fact it installs nothing. I was about to go and just copy the already installed version I have on Windows XP, when it ocurred to me to run the installation in “compatibility mode”. It worked!

I can NOT communicate with my terrible 2nd hand Meade telescope, but I suppose that is related with not having an old plain serial port available on the computer and the USB-to-serial adapters on the market not doing their job properly. Still, Starry Night is working and – honestly – the virtual sky is more informative, even if light years less romantic.

I considered http://www.command-line-imageconverterplus.com/ but it is NOT free.

Then I found http://sourceforge.net/projects/imgbconvert/. Super simple and elegant. It just does the job, for free. Great!

http://code.google.com/p/zscreen/

Indeed, it was the only program to handle my Canon’s 1080p video files.

But I was surprised to find that IG2 fails with my MPEG2 satellite recordings, so I went back hunting for a new solution.

I found “movie thumbnail”:
http://moviethumbnail.sourceforge.net/index.en.html

It is free, open source, the fastest and most configurable solution I know!
The “problem” for some is that it is a command line tool, having no graphical interface.

Still, for those who aren’t lazy and are willing to read the command line options, this software does deliver results!

Here is a copy/paste of my command line call for creating thumbnails for ALL .mpg files in a folder (*.mpg), each having 2 columns (-c 2), with a .JPG output quality of 100% (-j 100), no file information (-i), every 30 seconds (-s 30), the generated file being 1024 pixels wide (-w 1024).

<your path to>\mtn.exe -c 2 -j 100 -i -s 30 -w 1024 *.mpg

Some applications now distribute their installers not in the usual .exe or .msi formats, but as .application archives that are usually much less configurable and extremely opaque, hiding not only the files that will be sourced for the installation, but also their install destination.

For example, I am trying Twitter clients and I am filtering them by some criteria, the two most important being:
- they must NOT be Adobe AIR apps (that represents a step back in time, having to run a much less tried desktop manager and an extra software layer on top of the mature Windows desktop);
- they should be open source, so I can take a look at what is effectively happening.

Theoretically, at the top of the list there should be digiTweet, since it is an open source Windows app, available from http://digitweet.codeplex.com/. But it fails big time:

- the .application installer asked me no questions and just dumped the app to a terribly named folder, under AppData:
\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0\4XKL3AOZ.D9D\Z0TPNVDP.5QA\digi..tion_0000000000000000_0001.0000_ecf30c0867a7f947
- it also created no start menu icons!

But, in this case, the worst thing is that digiTweet just does not work: it always gives me a “login failed” message, as if I was failing my login data, which I am not, as tested in the other clients.

This “login failed” issue is well alive, for months, as reported in the project’s “issue tracker”:
http://digitweet.codeplex.com/workitem/5764

Not open source, but also providing a .application installer, there is “Blu”:
http://www.thirteen23.com/experiences/desktop/blu/

This other .application installer will download an extra 14 MB file and impose a license agreement that I just declined.

So, was this just a bad experience of mine with .application installers, or is there more to it?

The full Bernie story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7AiMoOSxlk

It is very unpleasant to have a website mugged, or “hacked”, for no reason at all but the display of the “signatures” of the abusers.
After all these years, here are some tips.

(1)

If you have an ASP.NET web.config global file, yet the system says it can NOT find a valid web.config for a particular application, it might be because of wrong permissions on that app’s file system containing folder.

Since I run IIS6, this page was helpful:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317955/

It basically says: “add the NETWORK SERVICE user to the app’s folder”.

Indeed, every .NET app folder must allow the “NETWORK SERVICE” user with the permissions:
- read
- read and execute
- list folder contents

(2)

In IIS6 the user IUSR_TEMPLATE represents an anonymous web visitor and so must be available for all resources to be made public on the WWW.

Generally, this user should only have READ permits and nothing else, for all resources.

If some particular folders require writing, give this user READ and WRITE permits, but *never* WRITE and EXECUTE.

Ideally, the WRITE permit should only be given to out-of-reach-of-the-web-server folders, meaning locations that are nowhere in the tree being made public by IIS, Apache or whatever the http server. But this isn’t always possible: most Content Management Systems (CMSs) will require at least one writable public folder, for example to where bloggers can upload pictures – just follow the minimal approach and the *never* WRITE and EXECUTE rule.

(3)

For read-only web presences, if you strictly follow the minimal rule, giving nothing but the READ permit to the web visitor user and no other permits to no other users at all, you’ll end up with a very secure site, but with some annoyances, e.g. FTP uploading contents will fail probably with a “450 can’t access file” error.

In Windows, you can easily fix it by giving “full control” to the SYSTEM user at some entry point.

(4)

Some CMSs that support themes, like Worpress, might display a blank page after being moved or copied. One very simple solution is to install a new theme, activate it, then return to the original.

This wonderful free software is available from
http://www.yawcam.com/download.php

The only features I miss are:
- support for more than one camera, using a single instance of the program;
- full support for Logitech’s latest driver version, which does NOT allow the camera’s full native resolution (2 MP) to be used by any third party app I know of.

I am making this post so that I don’t forget the file format for my automatic snapshots.
Although the program is fully documented, it takes a few seconds to find and understand the variables for file names.

Initially, my filename format for time lapsed captures was:

sphere_{num6}_{dateY}{dateM}{dateD}{tstampH}{tstampM}{tstampS}.png

but the {num6} variable – which corresponds to an auto increasing 6 digits number – only works if the files’ names are exactly the same, snap after snap, which they are not when using date/time with resolution down to the second.

So now I use:

sphere_{dateY}{dateM}{dateD}{tstampH}{tstampM}{tstampS}.png

and this gives names like

sphere_20110130_124728.png

“sphere” is just the prefix I picked for making it clear that the snapshots were taken with a Logitech Quickcam Sphere camera.

To access these settings do settings > edit settings

And here is one shot from my current location:

I found one way to make preferred settings persist, which is something that is surprisingly NOT supported at all – and this the sole reason the solution is kind of UNelegant.

First understand the following:

- gadgets are basically web pages loaded by a web browser named “side bar”, which runs under the “sidebar.exe” image name.

- the running gadgets and their settings are stored at the following path:

C:\Users\<your windows user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar

for example

C:\Users\arthur\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar

- the key file is

C:\Users\<your windows user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\settings.ini

which stores ALL the running gadgets settings.

Now that the relevant basics have been explained, in order to preserve the settings of your running gadgets, so that they persist in a close/open situation, proceed as follows:

(1) make sure your desired gadgets are running and properly configured.

(2) copy

C:\Users\<your windows user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\settings.ini

to some alternate name like

C:\Users\<your windows user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\settings_bk.ini

(3) launch “task manager”, look for “sidebar.exe” under the “image name” column, right click on the name and pick “end process“, then confirm you want to close the process – this will close all the gadgets, which is ok.

(4) delete the original settings.ini

(5) copy settings_bk.ini to settings.ini

(6) relaunch your desired gadgets: they will start with your preferred settings, requiring no reconfiguration.

That is it.

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Encarta Reference Library\2009\A\Updates

but that location, as mentioned in the previous post is not really available in Windows 7…

For Encarta 2009, the updates folder in Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista is

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Encarta Reference Library\2009\A\Updates

Now you just have to search for the updates.

To the best of my knowledge, the very final Encarta 2009 update, before Microsoft’s management decided that people no longer use offline encyclopedias and do everything on the Web, was an article on Roger Federer.

I think the Web does not fully replace encyclopedia type products such as Encarta 2009 and Britannica 2009, for at least 4 reasons I can think of: (1) offline availability, (2) zero latency while searching, (3) certainty about the documents’ sources, (4) the more comfortable state of mind that comes with “having” the content, as opposed to first have to face the barrier of having to go ask for it.