Roundtable November 2003

roundtable@muug.ca

12 participants
11 discussions

CD, VCD & DVD Burning
by John Lange 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

At a recent MUUG meeting someone was asking about burning VCDs (Video CDs). I believe the consensus at the meeting was that burning under Linux was comprised of a hodge-podge of various command line tools for converting video formats and burning making it quite difficult at best. I recently stumbled on the following software: http://www.k3b.org/ which seems to bring everything under one roof and claims to do CD, VCD, and DVD burning all in one application (it does not appear to be just a GUI front end to command line tools). However, I do not currently have a burner to test it with so I was hoping someone from the group could give it a whirl and report back on success? Thanks. -- John Lange BigHostBox.com ltd (204) 885 0872 Toll free: 1-866-690-8297

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Creating a VCD
by Sean A. Walberg 24 Nov '03

24 Nov '03

After reading up on some of the links passed around, and some more googling, I managed to convert an AVI into a VCD that played fine on mv DVD player. I posted a short writeup, along with a link to some scripts: http://ertw.com/blog/archives/002476.html Sean -- Sean A. Walberg <sean(a)ertw.com> http://www.ertw.com

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Subscribe
by shai moore 20 Nov '03

20 Nov '03

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Eclipse and C/C++
by John Lange 20 Nov '03

20 Nov '03

Someone at the last MUUG meeting was asking about C/C++ with Eclipse. I stumbled upon this article specifically on that topic. It is very current having been just been posted on Nov 13. http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT8349506804.html Hope it helps. -- John Lange BigHostBox.com ltd (204) 885 0872 Toll free: 1-866-690-8297

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water clock
by millward 19 Nov '03

19 Nov '03

I was wondering if anyone out there might be able to tell me how these water clocks work. All you do is fill it up with mildly salty water, and that's what it runs on. The one I've got has been keeping good time for about 5-6 days now. Once in a while a little bubble comes up, so it must be producing some kind of waste gas. I'd like to build my own circut based on whatever devices run this clock, just for fun. Would anyone know what kind of electronics run on water? And where I could get them? I didn't buy my clock through the net, but it's selling at: http://www.computergear.com/waterclock.html All the site says about how it runs is: "The fuel cell extracts electrons from the electrolyte forming a steady stream of electrical current that drives the clock." That's all very well, but it doesn't tell me what the name of the fuel cell is, where I can get them, and how I can build a curcit based on the fuel cell's power.

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Re: [RndTbl] water clock
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 19 Nov '03

19 Nov '03

According to millward: > I was wondering if anyone out there might > be able to tell me how these water clocks work. > All you do is fill it up with mildly salty water, > and that's what it runs on. The one I've got > has been keeping good time for about 5-6 days > now. Once in a while a little bubble comes up, so > it must be producing some kind of waste gas. > I'd like to build my own circut based on whatever > devices run this clock, just for fun. Would anyone > know what kind of electronics run on water? > And where I could get them? > I didn't buy my clock through the net, but it's selling > at: > http://www.computergear.com/waterclock.html > All the site says about how it runs is: > "The fuel cell extracts electrons from the electrolyte > forming a steady stream of electrical current that > drives the clock." > That's all very well, but it doesn't tell me > what the name of the fuel cell is, where I can > get them, and how I can build a curcit based > on the fuel cell's power. I would assume it's just your basic electro-chemistry at work here. You put a couple electrodes in a saline solution or other liquid with electrolytes in it (e.g. soda pop, Gatorade, etc.), and you'll get electricity being produced. You can also get the same results by sticking electrodes into a potato, lemon, etc. Granted, the amount of current you get is very small, but it's enough for the typical low-power LCD digital clock. There's nothing special about the electronics, other than the fact that the power consumption has to be very low. I don't remember the details of the electro-chemical reactions, but the electrolytes react chemically with the metal electrodes to produce the electricity. Depending on the specific reaction, yes, you could get some gas produced as a by-product. You also end up with compounds being deposited on the metal electrodes, or with something being eaten away from the electrodes, so eventually they'd have to be replaced too, or the reaction stops. Anyone with a better recall of basic chemistry? (It's been too many decades since I've looked at this.) -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609

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Summary of VCD discussion?
by Sean A. Walberg 12 Nov '03

12 Nov '03

A few links and projects that handled transcoding and making of [S]VCDs were mentioned last night. Could anyone who was taking notes post a summary? Thanks, Sean -- Sean A. Walberg <sean(a)ertw.com> http://www.ertw.com

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Debian woes: Clueless newb? Or enemy action? You decide!
by Scott Balneaves 07 Nov '03

07 Nov '03

So, I started out my GNU/Linux life with the old Yggdrasil LGX distro (way way back in '93), and then proceeded (quite happily) for several year with Slackware. However, for the last 5 years or so, I've been a RH user. However, with the end-of-line of RH, I'm doing my due-diligance, and not only evaluating Fedora, but other distros as well. I keep hearing all this wonderful stuff about Debian. It seems every time you talk about rpm package woes on a list, some Debian afficionado immediately pipes up with "well, on Debian all you have to do is type apt-something install cokebottle, and nana nana boo boo everything works. Redhat Sucks!". So, deciding that, perhaps, I should check into this, I grabbed some woody ISO's from debian.org, read the install manual, and dived in. So, I've completed the base install, things are fine, and I'm onto the tasksel program. Gee, I'd like to be a desktop system, so that's what I pick. Guess what? No xfree86 servers. No xterm. Turns out (at least from what I saw) the only way to do this is to either a) Somehow guess (it wasn't listed in the installation guide) that I have to go into dpkg after the tasksel, scroll through 8517 (or whatever) packages, and find xserver-xfree86 and xterm packages, or b) Somehow guess I'm supposed to do an apt-get on these after the fact. Am I missing something? I checked the Installation guide 3 times, and they don't seem to talk about X at all, and I couldn't find a "Setting up your graphical desktop on Debian" help file. I figured it out, but the answers didn't jump up and slap me in the face, either. :-) Second issue: I know Debian's focus is stability, but I'm willing to risk bugs in exchange for something a little more, errr, this millenium, lets say :-) Is there an "apt-make-me-modern" command? I've done both apt-get update and apt-get upgrade, and basically that just gets me to the latest release stuff. C'mon, Debian buffs @ muug! Here's your chance to show me up as the clueless Debian newb I am. I *REALLY* want to give Debian an honest try to see if it's worthwhile deploying here at Legal Aid. So warm up your LART cluesticks and wail away: I can take it! ;-) Scott -- Scott Balneaves | The aim of a joke is not to degrade Systems Administrator | the human being but to remind him that Legal Aid Manitoba | he is already degraded. -- George Orwell

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Used Computer books
by John Lange 06 Nov '03

06 Nov '03

Is anyone aware of a used bookstore in Winnipeg that has a good selection of computer books? Or another suggestion on how to get books for reasonable prices? I had a look in Chapters today at some computer books and every one I picked up was more than $70 ! -- John Lange BigHostBox.com ltd (204) 885 0872 Toll free: 1-866-690-8297

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Fedora - Get your red hot bits here...
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 06 Nov '03

06 Nov '03

Hot off the bittorrent, here are the ISO images for the new Fedora Core 1 release... ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/redhat/fedora/linux/core/1/i386/iso/ The official announcement will be coming out from Red Hat soon, but the news was already leaked via Slashdot and others. The official release time was earlier today, and (as usual) they gave the mirror sites far too little advance notice. Anyway, share and enjoy! -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609

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Roundtable November 2003