Slashdot picked up this article about four illegal immigrant kids from Phoenix, Arizona, US. The team won the robot competition beating MIT and other elite schools. It remined me of my article, Digital Dream for Myanmar. The kids come from a disadvantaged background.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html

Kids can become what they want to be if given the right opportunities.

I personally think the comments from Slashdot are worth reading.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/05/03/30/1426214.shtml?tid=216&tid=146&tid=14 gives you some perspectives about America and immigrants.

Upgrading to Gentoo 2005.0

I changed my /etc/make.profile to Gentoo 2005.0

// removing the old sym link
rm /etc/make.profile

// make a sym link to 2005.0 profile ( etc/make.profile)
ln -s /usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/x86/2005.0 make.profile

// environment update
env-update

// emerge sync 
emerge --sync

// world update
emerge --update --deep world

// I tried updating with this 
// u = update
// v = verbose
// D = dependencies
emerge -uvD world

// emergign
emerge binutils glib gcc portage gcc-config

I installed mplayer to watch movies on my Gentoo system.

// emerging mplayer
emerge mplayer

Here is a screen shot of mplayer. It is a command-line based movie player. gmplayer is a graphical equivalent of mplayer. But I only installed a command line version.

• To view a movie, just type in $mplayer movie_file.mpg
• To view a play list, just type in $mplayer -playlist list.txt
• The movie will play. To control the movie, use keyboard.
• Volume Control: decrease = /, increase = *
• FastForward = -> (right arrow), Rewind = <- (left arrow)
• > = next in the play list, < = previous in the play list
• f = full screen
• Pause = spacebar
• m = mute sound
• Quit = q or Esc

How to get XMMS player on Gentoo

// emerging XMMS player
emerge xmms

// emerging xvid codecs
emerge xvid 

// emerge MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 video encoding library
emerge libfame

// emerge mpeg library
emerge libmpeg3

I have been using Gentoo Linux and here is a screen shot. I like this distribution. Currently, I have Gentoo Linux, Redhat Linux and Windows XP installed on my desktop computer.

Gentoo with XFCE

I read this article about the Internet censorship and access to blocked web sites. People in Saudi Arabia are paying US $ 30 to 60 for access to filterd (blocked) web pages. It has become a black market of the Internet era.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.html?story_id=2787

This is what I received in my spam e-mails.

International Thinking at its Best!

Question: What is the truest definition of Globalization?

Answer: Princess Diana's death.

Question: How come?

Answer:

         
           An English princess

           with an Egyptian boyfriend

           crashes in a French tunnel,

           driving a German car

           with a Dutch engine,

           driven by a Belgian who was drunk

           on Scottish whisky, (check the bottle before you change the spelling)

           followed closely by Italian Paparazzi,

           on Japanese motorcycles;

           treated by an American doctor,

           using Brazilian medicines.

           This is sent to you by an American,

           using Bill Gates's technology,

           and you're probably reading this on your computer,

           that uses Taiwanese chips,

           and a Korean monitor,

           assembled by Bangladeshi workers

           in a Singapore plant,

           transported by Indian lorry-drivers,

           hijacked by Indonesians,

           unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen,

           and trucked to you by Mexican illegals.....

           That, my friends, is Globalization.
		   

File Recovery Tool

We accedentally deleted some important files and here is the tool we used to recover it.

http://www.geocities.jp/br_kato/

You can download it here for version 2.5.14 (rest2514.zip, 162 KB)

Restoration tool restores files which are deleted from the recycle bin by mistake. Conversely, delete files completely.

[OS] Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP
Freeware 	
[Platform] IBM-PC/AT Compatible PC 	
[Author] Brian Kato

I have been thinking about lives in Burma and now in Laos. I really had fun the last two years living in Burma after my studies in the States. Some experiences, such as unreliable electricity, were frustrating. Overall, I loved being in Burma. If you have been reading my diary, I bitched a lot about Burma. But it's because I want the country to develop and change for better. There are still a lot of good things even now. Don't get me wrong if you are reading my bitching the last two years :-) I still love my country and the people.

Here is a picture of me and my students from the BARS program at the Myanmar Institute of Theology last year. We went to a church in Rangoon, Burma to talk about our mission trip to villages in Karen state. (Photo courtesy of Elizabeth)

Judson Church in Rangoon and my students from MIT. The man with the Burmese coat is the Dean of BARS from MIT. (Photo courtesy of Elizabeth)

Whenever I got an e-mail from ipfw.edu which uses Novell Netware server, I always got the e-mail as from "unknown sender" However, when I downloaded the e-mail using Mozilla Thunderbird, it shows myfriend@ipfw.edu address correctly. This "unknown sender" thing happens only on web-based gmail. An error of whose? The glitch between Novell server and gmail web-based interface? I hope gmail team notices this and fixes it. Hey, I like gmail experiences so far.

This is one of the jokes that was sent to me from a friend.

READ THIS BEFORE LOOKING AT THE PICTURE:

An employee got a pen stuck inside the printer. He began trying to remove the pen but was told by his supervisor they didn't have time for that and to just put a note on the printer telling people not to use it & report the problem to the helpdesk. So he grabbed a piece of paper and scrawled a note on it. About 20 minutes later, one of the techs came in laughing & says he was called to service the printer. He saw the note & investigated the problem. Attached is what he found. Sometimes things don't always come out the way you want them to!

If the nature of censorship forces you to use encryption, here is how to use GnuPG for your encryped e-mails.

A Breif Tutorial on GnuPG on Windows

Key Generation and Exporting it to a file

1. gpg --gen-key

2. gpg --export -armor name > name.txt

Send the resulting key file to your friend.

Attach name.txt (which is your public key) to your friend using your e-mail.

Importing the public key your friend sent

3. gpg --import name.txt

Encrypting the message

4. gpg -ear nna message.txt

This encrypts "message.txt" with the public key of "nna" and writes it to "message.asc" after signing it with your user id.

Or

gpg -ear nna -u khk message.txt

Ditto, but sign the file with your alternative user id "khk"

5. Now the message is ready to be sent. Just open "message.asc" with Notepad and copy and paste everything.

6. Your encrypted message is sent. Congratulations!

Decrypting the message, message.asc

gpg -d message.asc

Or

gpd -do message.asc message.txt

with the -o option you can redirect the output to a file.

More information here at http://www.gnupg.org/

Another Tutorial on DVDtoOgm Conversion

I have been compressing my DVDs into MPEG-4 format using DVDtoOGM 1.41 beta from http://dvdtoogm.divx-digest.com/

Download

1. XviD codec

2. Ogg Vorbis Direct Show Filters

3. Ogg subtitle filter

4. DVDtoOGM

5. SmartRipper

Put all those in one folder.

Install

1. Install XviD first.

2. Install DVDtoOgm - DVDtoOgm is a large package that comes with many bundled software - you should leave the default installation alone, unless you know what you are doing.

3. In the current version of DVDtoOgm, you have to separately install the Ogg Vorbis DirectShow and Ogg subtitle filters.

4. If you have never used VirtualDub/VirtualDubMod before, you need to manually locate the "VirtualDubMod.exe" from where you installed DVDtoOgm and run it.

5. Install SmartRipper by unzipping it. Remember where you unzipped it because you have to run it from there.

DVD Ripping

First, copy the DVD folder to your hard disk.

Run SmartRipper. Double-click on "SmartRipper" from your unzipped folder.

Load the DVD files by clicking on icon for the "reload". Click on the icon for "Target". That's where you ripped DVD files will be placed.

Click on "start" and you will just have to wait.

DVD to Ogm

Now, run DVDtoOgm 1.41 beta from your start menu.

Click on "DVD2AVI"

File > Open

Open the ripped DVD files. And then, File > Save Project

Wait for a while. Make sure you note some info: 1. Aspect Ratio 2. Video Type 2. Frame Type

When done, you can close DVD2AVI and go back to DVDtoOgm.

Click on Load You should choose the yourproject.d2v file. You should see Audio 1 in under Audio Calculation

Choose Ogg or Mp3

Now go to "Audio" tab. In Audio Settings, make sure you add yourproject AC3 T01 ... 448Kbps 48Khz.wav file to it. Before you do that make sure the old files are deleted by clicking on "Delete".

Check Final Audio Output If there are old files, click on Delete After that, click on Addwhich is just above Delete

Now is the time you have to use the info from DVD2AVI. Choose the correct Input Resolution, Input Aspect Ratio Click on Smart Crop All

Go to "Useful" tab. Click on "Search" for all "Set Directories"

Go to "Encode" tab. Choose the Xvid from Video Codec Choose Both Passes Configure 1st pass and 2nd pass by clicking on them. You can click on Save & Encode

That's it. Go get something to eat because that will be a while. You can enjoy the DVD quality movie which is only about 700 MB now.

More info: http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/dvd2ogm.html