In the Process of Switching to Blip.tv (Updated)
Update (09/05/2010): All the videos on this blog has been transferred to blip.tv and switched to the blip.tv embedded Flash player. Please view my previous posts for the videos or visit the show archive for all of my videos uploaded on blip.tv
I don’t know why I don’t like YouTube. Perhaps it doesn’t have enough feature for me? Anyway, I’m transferring the videos I made so far to Blip.tv since I have an old account there. I hadn’t uploaded any videos since 2009. The latest video was the final project for my basic ColdFusion course in college. As you can see on my show archive page, about all of the videos are created for my classes at school. Some of the videos are also on my CA 272 final project page.
Once the transfer process is completed, I will replace all the videos on this blog to the new video player. For the sneak peek of the performance of blip.tv, please watch the following video which was made in Windows because I didn’t switch to GNU/Linux yet:
Note that this is a HD video, which means that it requires fast Internet download speed to view smoothly or you can download the video using DownloadHelper for Firefox.
The easiness of sharing between Ubuntu-based Distros and Windows
GNU/Linux uses Samba to sharing files within a network. I remembered last time when I tried to use Samba to connect to my Windows XP netbook using Fedora. It involves several complicated procedures that took me long time to complete. During those painful times, I failed numerous times to get Fedora to be discovered by Windows XP despite following good tutorials. It finally worked after I read the tutorial several times and numerous trials.
After I switched to Kubuntu this week, I discovered an easier way to share files between GNU/Linux and Windows. It has become much easier to sharing files with Windows.
- Right click the folder that you would like to be shared
- Select “Sharing Options”
- In the “Folder Sharing” dialog box, check “Sharing this folder” checkbox
- After customize the sharing options, click “Create Share”
After the dialog box closed, the share is created. It’s a lot easier compare to the Samba setup in Fedora.
Although lots of videos on YouTube showcase the Samba feature available in Ubuntu, it doesn’t give you how to work with other computers on the network in order to get it working. I will create a video demonstration later next week to demonstrate how to get shared files in other computers on the same network, including Windows XP and Untutu.
An inspirational Talk by Linus Torvalds
As you may already know, Linus Torvalds is the creator of Linux kernel. He began writing code for Linux kernel in 1991. Today I found and watched an hour-long talk by Linus Torvalds on YouTube hosted by the Computer History Museum. As a computer science student and a web developer, it has taught me not to give up an project and continue to improve my programming skills quickly. You can watch the whole talk below or click the following link to go to YouTube to download it using Download Helper:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVTWCPoUt8w (Note that the description is incorrect, it states Linux OS instead of Linux kernel. I recommend you to watch the full talk, DO NOT rely on video description.)
The Origins of Linux – Linus Torvalds
Still Solving Flash Problem in Second Life
Yesterday I successfully ran Second Life official viewer on Fedora x64. However, I discovered that I cannot view YouTube video and other Flash-enabled websites when testing the new Shared Media feature in SL Viewer 2 Beta. Today I found out there only have one blog post related to the Flash problem over Second Life blog. It talks about Flash and Firefox issues related to SL Viewer 2 Beta. You can view this blog post right here: https://blogs.secondlife.com/message/111720, and don’t be afraid to start a discussion if you have any problem with SL Viewer 2 Beta on GNU/Linux.
Finally got Second Life Official Viewer Working under Fedora 12 x64 Updated
Second Life viewer 2 beta has been out for a while. It features a web browser like interface and a new feature called Shared Media that makes me to rethink about trying to install SL viewer on my Fedora x64 laptop. The new feature has the ability to bring web applications to the Second Life, even Flash games and YouTube.
UPDATE: Unfortunately, I cannot get the flash to work. neither do the Youtube and HTML 5 ogg forfmat.
Two websites opened on one prime
Top: youtube.com  Front: robbychen.com
Click the image to enlarge
System requirement for the SL Viewer 2 beta is the same as the original viewer. This means that it still doesn’t support 64-bit Linux system. I have to install 32-bit compatibility libraries on the Fedora x64 system. After a little research on Google, I found a blog post about installing 32-bit support onto Fedora 11. I followed its steps to install the 32-bit support libraries. Because of the differences between Fedora 11 and 12, I changed the architecture for the libraries mentioned in the post from i586 to i686. Below is the list of support libraries that I installed:
arts.i686
audiofile.i686
bzip2-libs.i686
cairo.i686
compat-expat1.i686
compat-libstdc++-33.i686
compiz.i686
cyrus-sasl-lib.i686
dbus-libs.i686
directfb.i686
esound-libs.i686
fltk.i686
freeglut.i686
gtk2.i686
hal-libs.i686
imlib.i686
jack-audio-connection-kit.i686
lcms-libs.i686
lesstif.i686
libacl.i686
libaio.i686
libao.i686
libattr.i686
libcap.i686
libdrm.i686
libexif.i686
libgcrypt.i686
libgnomecanvas.i686
libICE.i686
libieee1284.i686
libsigc++20.i686
libSM.i686
libtool-ltdl.i686
libusb.i686
libwmf.i686
libwmf-lite.i686
libX11.i686
libXau.i686
libXaw.i686
libXcomposite.i686
libXdamage.i686
libXdmcp.i686
libXext.i686
libXfixes.i686
libxkbfile.i686
libxml2.i686
libXmu.i686
libXp.i686
libXpm.i686
libXScrnSaver.i686
libxslt.i686
libXt.i686
libXtst.i686
libXv.i686
libXxf86vm.i686
lzo.i686
mesa-libGL.i686
mesa-libGLU.i686
nas-libs.i686
nss_ldap.i686
opencdk.i686
openldap.i686
pam.i686
popt.i686
pulseaudio-libs.i686
sane-backends-libs-gphoto2.i686
sane-backends-libs.i686
SDL.i686
svgalib.i686
unixODBC.i686
zlib.i686
Notice that I removed any of the version number from the original list in order to install the updated libraries, and I also removed three libraries that doesn’t available in the Fedora 12 repositories. It seems that it’s working despite of missing three libraries.
After the installation completed, I launched SL to see if it’s working. Sadly, it displayed an error stated that creating window error. I knew it was the video driver problem since I stuck at this step before and gave up. I thought the problem is that the installed NVIDIA driver through RPM Fusion was outdated. I removed this driver and installed the official proprietary driver from NVIDIA website, restarted my laptop. Finally, I started the new SL viewer and logged into the in-world. I have been used it for 30 minutes. Up until now, the performance and stability of the viewer is great. I suppose I can use the new SL viewer thanks to the proprietary driver after all, although I don’t know why it doesn’t work under the driver in the RPM Fusion repo.
The FSF Open Letter to Google
The following is the email I received from FSF about Google’s recently purchased On2 video codec maker. I already talked about Google’s usage of On2′s VP8 codec might come true in the post “The future version of Youtube might not support Firefox” almost one month ago. I strongly support this statement to encourage Google to license its newly acquired video codec as a royalty-free license. If Google freed the VP8 video codec and switched its proprietary Flash-based Youtube site to its new VP8-based site using royalty-free license, more people will aware the importance of open video format as well as open source movement.
Dear supporter,
This week, Google’s attempt to purchase video codec maker On2 was
approved by On2′s shareholders. If Google does the right thing, this
could be wonderful news for free formats.The FSF has just posted an open letter to Google, calling on it to
free On2′s VP8 codec with an irrevocable royalty-free license, and to
promote the newly freed video codec through YouTube.Read why it would be so amazing for free software developers, free
software users, and all users of the web if Google does the right
thing:http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/google-free-on2-vp8-for-youtube/
We feel that this is a very important message for web developers,
video creators, and tech-savvy members of the public to hear. Please
help us spread it around, particularly here:http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/b462q/open_letter_to_google_free_vp8_and_use_it_on/#
And if you have an account on digg:
http://digg.com/tech_news/Open_letter_to_Google_free_On2_VP8_and_use_it_on_YouTube
(It’s important that we let people everywhere know about the
importance of free software and free formats, so please help spread
the word — but please don’t let sharing important news about free
software lead to further use of services that promote and use proprietary
software.)Thanks!
Sincerely,
Holmes Wilson
Free Software Foundation
The future version of Youtube might not support Firefox
Recently, YouTube has opened its TestTube HTML 5 service to allow users to experiment with HTML 5 version of YouTube. Unfortunately, TestTube only uses H.264 codec to display the video which Firefox doesn’t support. H.264 is a non-free, licensed codec. In order to use the codec, video content publishers needs to pay $5 million license fee every year. Mozilla supports free and open solution. Its Ogg Theora codec is similar to H.264 codec. Not only its video quality is the same as H.264 (sometimes maybe better), but also it can easily convert to a large variety of video formats. According to “Will Idealism be Firefox’s Downfall?“, Google might use On2 codec on the future version of YouTube, which is better than H.264. If not, YouTube users will be switching to other web browsers that supports H.264 and Firefox will be history.