Computer Science, Linux, and more....

Facebook Captchas

2009-09-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

What is a captcha?
Click here, for a visual or here for a more formal definition.

Yes, captchas are evil. I know why we need them, but I'm not a bot. I should not be required to 'prove' that I'm human every time I want to send a message, add a friend, etc. I just got a Facebook account and I don't know how many of you guys can just go through life putting up with captchas! Anyway, I did my research and tried to find a way to get rid of them. To my convenience, there is a way to prove that you are human permanently!
To do this, you must register a phone with Facebook and verify that you have this phone by typing in the verification code.

Here is the process:

Login into your Facebook account.
Now, next to your name ( top right corner ) hover your pointer over "Settings" then click on "Account Settings"
Next, you want to click on the tab that says "Mobile"
Then click on the link that says: "Register for Facebook Mobile Texts"
Just follow the on screen instructions and submit your cell phone number.

Now one thing that nobody told me is that Facebook may take a while to send you this verification, so don't sit there and wait for it (it took Facebook about 12 hrs to send me a verification code). Just click the "submit" button once and continue with your daily routine (I clicked it about 6 times... and I got several verification codes...). You don't have to leave the page open, it's fine if you close it and go do something else. Then when Facebook sends you the code, follow the steps 1-3 and at step 4 you would click this link instead: "Already receive a mobile confirmation code?".

Unless, you really want to receive texts when something gets changed in your account, I would set Texts to off. The only reason we need this is to prove that we are indeed human. Also, you may want to see if your phone number was added to your "Info" page, and make sure you have the right privacy settings if you don't want to disclose this information to the world.

As always, if you have any questions or additional information, do not hesitate to leave a comment :D

Happy Gossiping!

OpenOffice Keyboard Shortcuts

2009-09-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

I have started taking notes on my laptop for my Geology course, for one reason, it keeps me awake. I actually found it very convenient. I can kind of type at the same speed the guy is talking. Anyway, sometimes there was the need to do superscript, subscripts, and even bullet points. Those things were slowing me down, but thanks to the article, Ten fantastic keyboard shortcuts in OpenOffice.org, I am now able to do things much faster w/o removing my hands from the home row :D.

Converting MKV to MP4 PSP format

2009-09-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

I just recently obtained a PSP, and I wanted to put some videos in it. So I figured I should just be able to stick them in the VIDEOS folder in the PSP Memory card and it should work ,right? No!
After spending some time on the net, I found out that the videos must be converted into a special type of MP4 so that it could be played by the PSP.
It seems that there are various ways of converting videos to PSP format, but one of the easiest and more efficient ways of doing this is by using Mencoder, at least for converting mkv's.

Let's cut to the chase, and let's get you started converting those fantastic mkv's into PSP format. First of all, you will need to install Mencoder:

sudo apt-get install mencoder

Once that is taken care of, you can run the following command to convert:

mencoder -mc 0 -af volume=15:0 -subfont-text-scale 3 -vf pullup,softskip,dsize=480:272,\
scale=0:0,harddup,unsharp=l3x3:0.5 \
-ofps 24000/1001 -oac faac -faacopts br=128:mpeg=4:object=2:raw \
-channels 2 -srate 48000 -ovc x264 -x264encopts \
bitrate=500:global_header:partitions=all:trellis=1:level_idc=30:threads=2 \
-of lavf -lavfopts format=psp input.video -o output.video

I have no idea of what a lot of that means, I just know it works.

Yata!! You can now convert mkv to PSP using this command and giving it the values you desire.

Once I figured out how to convert one video, I decided write a bash script that allowed me to queue up several videos for conversion, which to me, is more convenient because I have multiple videos I want to convert and I don't want to have to write this every time for each video.

You can download my bash script here.

You will need to make this script executable, do the following:

sudo chmod +x mkv2PSP.sh

I created this script so that it took a text file as an argument. In this text file, you will specify the absolute path of the .mkv file(s).
One way to create this text file, is with the following command:

ls -d $PWD/*.mkv > FILE

So with this FILE, all you would have to do is call my script with FILE as a parameter:

./mkv2PSP FILE

I would recommend adding this to .bash_aliases to be able to call this script from anywhere on your machine. This is it, if you have any questions/suggestions please post a comment or email me.

[UPDATE]
When converting to the PSP I found that the volume was too low to use on the bus ( even after setting it to MAX) so I looked for ways to hack the PSP into getting me better volume. All the options seemed dangerous and not worth it, but today in my CSE class, I thought that maybe I should increase the volume of the video itself when encoding! So I went online and found this. I will test it out and see if there is any big difference and report back and update my script :D.

[UPDATE]
So after trying out that implementation of volume increase did work! The script above has been modified to reflect this.

Hot Webcam Problem Gone!

2009-09-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

I own an ASUS A8JS, and one of the problems I had with Ubuntu is that my webcam was getting hot without it being used. Back in the day, when I was running 7.04, I could just run the following command in the terminal:

sudo modprobe -r gspca

Then the problem disappeared! Unfortunately, after I upgraded, the problem could no longer be fixed by that line. It bothered me but it was not of great concern, so I just let it slide. Currently, however, I have been taking my laptop to class and taking notes, and the hot webcam was draining my battery. I decided to give it a shot again and what do you know...It works!!!
The command was a bit different this time:

sudo modprobe -r gspca_vc032x

That did the magic, so if you have this same problem, give it a shot again; it may just work.

Enabling SHMConfig for Synaptics Touchpad

2009-06-13T22:39:00.000-07:00

My laptop is an ASUS A8JS, and there is thing nifty function where you press Fn+F9 and it disables your touchpad. However in Ubuntu, SHMConfig needs to be enabled to be able to do that. You do it once and then you are done but I forget to do it every time I upgrade. Every time I have to remember where it's the file I'm looking for and what is the string I need to add. Since I am in the process of learning python, I decided to make a script that did this for me. I may have overdone it when I started adding more 'features' but it gets the job done, gracefully (assuming no path names change). I only tested this in 9.04, but it should work in 8.10 as well. I got my information from this website. That is exactly the process my script follows. If you don't trust it you can look at the source code.
I also recently started using git, so you can checkout my script in my github, but if you just want the script Click Me!

**UPDATE**
My touchpad stopped working, I don't know if my own script caused it but it should have not happened because of it because I restored the backup file. This happened after a Kernel upgrade. I am currently using Kernel 2.6.28-13 so if anyone can confirm that it is the kernel upgrade and not my actual script, that would be very helpful.

**UPDATE-2**
Well what do you know, my touchpad works again, I have no idea what I did. The last thing I remember doing was reinstalling the synaptics drivers and restarting Ubuntu. That may have been the solution to my problem, but I really don't know.

Fascinating Anime

2009-05-26T18:50:00.000-07:00

One of my friends long ago was telling me that I should watch this anime series called Code Geass, and boy I wish I should've listened to her earlier. I totally love it! It is also very short, so I wont get bored and end up not watching entirely. Anyway, watch it. So get on YouTube and watch it :D.

You won't regret it.

Ubuntu: download Youtube Videos

2009-05-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

I have seen this question many times and I'm sure there is software out there programmed to do this for you, but if you use Ubuntu (this might work with other OS's) you do not need a program to do this. The trick is to play the youtube video and let the bar fill up all the way, you can watch it meanwhile or go wash dishes idk, but do not close the tab or the browser. Now what you want to do, is go to:

/tmp

There will be a file with some weird name like 'FlashBqqQrA', now this is your youtube video so make a copy and that's it! You can view this with VLC,

sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-esd mozilla-plugin-vlc

Enjoy!

Note: Done in Ubuntu 9.04

Jaunty, gnome-terminal font

2009-05-08T15:47:00.001-07:00

The first thing I do when I clean install an Ubuntu release, is configure my fonts. I need them to be just right otherwise it feels like I can't work right. Usually, I have no trouble when changing customizing my fonts, but in Jaunty, it was not that easy.

Let's cut to the chase, these are my settings for my fonts:

So this caused my terminal font to look like this (BTW I use Monospace Bold 11):

As you can see the font is very thing and weird, it burns my eyes! If this is the case for you too, then you need to do the following to fix your terminal font.

Create a .fonts.conf file in your home directory:

gedit ~/.fonts.conf

Then paste the following code:

1 <?xml version="1.0"?>
2 <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
3 <fontconfig>
4     <match target="pattern">
5         <test qual="any" name="family">
6             <string>monospace</string>
7         </test>
8         <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
9             <bool>true</bool>
10         </edit>
11     </match>
12 </fontconfig>

Save it and the effects should be immediate. This is the result after the file has been made.

I hope this helps someone out there. Share any other information I have missed and if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

No Booze Early on Sunday..

2009-04-08T22:49:00.000-07:00

This makes very little sense to me. Why are you not allowed to buy it before 10? and just on Sundays? Go figure. You've been warned.

RedBull Gives you Wings

2009-04-08T22:42:00.000-07:00

I just saw these on my way to 'A' Mountain and I thought it was interesting how many Red Bull cars there were in that parking lot.

No Posts

2009-04-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to update and add the things I have learned in Linux but every time I think about doing it, something shows up and I cannot do it. I'm hoping to do it some time between this week and next week. I'll be out next weekend so that's just out of the question.

Rockband Bass Pedal: Awkward Break

2008-12-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

As everyone knows, Rockband Bass Pedals have a tendency of being easily broken(cheap). So I was expecting mine to break sooner or later...and yeah it happened. However, my pedal broke differently from what I've seen (check out the pictures). I will probably get a replacement during Winter Break.

I'm now out for Winter Break and I attempted to repair my Rockband Bass pedal. It looks disgusting because I used some kind of epoxy to glue the base of the pedal and it worked really well... for a few days.

That glue was not able to sustain my 'mad' drumming skillz so I needed a bit more reinforcement. By this time I had already gotten the bass pedal replacement from BestBuy. My advice is that , unless you are really desperate, save your money and get yourself a better one. I was not very happy with it. Anyway, I ended up reinforcing my bass pedal with screws. Below are some of the pictures of the outcome.

Learning Dvorak

2008-12-06T14:13:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!! I'm trying Dvorak and I am going to track my progress here. Currently, I'm at 10 WPM, hopefully I'll get faster soon.

My First Entry

2008-11-13T06:57:00.000-08:00

There is nothing much to say about just that this is my first blog entry here at Blogger. I will update as time permits and try to add things that I think would help others in some way. However, that doesn't mean that I'll be adding random stuff that I think is interesting.

My blog ends here because I need to go study for my test :D.