Cleaning up duplicate notes on LMMS

Since certain keystrokes can copy notes on exactly the same position where there are already exactly the same notes, it so turned out, that I had some 6-7 identical notes overlapped in certain time slots. This condition is invisible in the GUI editor unless you try to move notes, just to find that there’s still [...]

Video encoding. Some useful command lines

This is just a few command lines I use every now and then. Just so I have them when I need them. Convert a lot of Flash Video files to DIVX, audio rate 128 kb/sec mp3: for i in *.flv ; do ffmpeg -i “$i” -ab 128k -b 1500k -vcodec mpeg4 -vtag DIVX “${i%.*}.avi” ; [...]

Cinelerra: When YUV4MPEG fails with mencoder

Somewhere in the region of version r31061-4.4.3, a bug in mplayer and mencoder made the program not cache properly. This causes issues when trying to play streams, or when rendering an edited video in Cinelerra in YUV4MPEG-to-pipe mode. The common behavior during rendering is that mencoder quits immediately or very soon, because it thinks end-of-file [...]

Gnome workaround: Downloading a MOV file from Canon 500D

One of the things I love about fancy GUI interfaces, is that they work as long as things are easy, and always fail at the critical moments. Downloading a 4 GB video clip from my Canon 500D to a Fedora 12, using the File Manager (nautilus?) was no different. As usual, when I plugged in [...]

UNISIM and command-line simulation with the Xilinx simulator

I simulate models outside of the Xilinx’ IDE (known as ISE), since the simulation is textual anyhow. Besides, running regression tests without being sure the simulation settings are repeated exactly is a good way to waste time every time the mouse clicks without our full awareness. Anyhow, my problem was that I instantiated a Xilinx [...]

GIMP Curves: Cleaning up old settings

Each and every time you use the Curves function in GIMP 2.6, it saves that setting, and labels it with the time it was used. The same color curve can then be used again, just by recognizing the time in the Presets drop-down menu within the Curves dialog box. This is a great feature, since [...]

Canonizing PCAD netlist files

OK, so the board designer just sent me an updated schematics of the design. Are there any changes? Comparing the schematics itself is hopeless. So I’ll compare the PCAD netfiles (those with a .NET extension). I mean, they are simple text files, after all. The problem is that Orcad feels free to change the order [...]

Mangling win32 executables with a hex editor

This is a short note about how to make small manipulations in executables or DLLs in order to get rid of malware behaviour. For example, if some application pops up a dialog box which I’d like to eliminate. It can also be the final step in cracking (which is very recommended as an educational experience). [...]

Tracing API calls on Windows

Linux has ltrace. Windows has…? I was looking for applications to trace DLL calls, so I could tell why a certain application goes wrong. The classic way is to get hints from library calls. Or system calls. Or both. In the beginning, I was turned down by they idea, that most trackers only support those [...]

DigiPro drawing tablet on Fedora 12

I just bought a DigiPro 5″/4″ drawing tablet to run with my Fedora 12. When plugging it in, the system recognized it, but every time I touched the tablet with the stylus pen, the cursor went to the upper left corner. Clicks worked OK, but it looked like the system needed to know the tablet’s [...]