Skypher » Cipher

Video Playback on Android

Cipher — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:25:32 +0000

Since a couple of months I have a new Android Phone. Ever since I got it I’ve been searching on how to play videos on the device.

When push comes to shove, it’s actually quite simple.

First: Install Jeff Hamilton’s ‘Video Player’ from the market.
This is a simple, no BS video player which supports playing MP4 or 3GPP with H.264, H.263 encoding and MP3, AAC or AMR Audio from your SD card.

Now that was easy.

Since the player does not support DivX XviD or anything else than stated above you might want to convert your video files. Luckily that is quite easy as well.

The Videora iPod converter works excellent it can be found here:
http://www.videora.com/en-us/Converter/iPod/

After installation, it’s somewhat ‘weird’ in my perception on how it works. But it does the job.

After installing, open up the settings ‘tab’ and select ‘encoding’.
Take iPod Classic (6th generation) from the dropdown and then select create a new profile, which you can dub ‘Android’ or something in the name field.

Under Video, take these settings (click for large):

Then click ‘OK’ and ‘Save Settings’.

Next up is starting an encoding job.

Go to convert

And then, this is the odd part. Select ‘Power Mode’ from the center block, ignore the annoying advertisements:

Ok that done, now, in the bottom part of the application you can see the next step.

You need to select the file you wish to encode and be sure to select the profile we just created as such:

You can choose to enqueue it or start encoding right away!

When done, which may take quite some time, you only have to copy your freshly created file to your phone’s SD card and start the Video Player. It will find the file by itself and you can watch straight away!

Any comment is welcome if you know a better application for the job, please tell me!

Have fun!

String concatenation vs. Array joins

Cipher — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:05:22 +0000

I’ve read several websites which claim that string concatenation is outperformed by array joining in PHP. I know from firsthand that this certainly is a fact in ASP. And it’s considered a ‘best practice’ in Javascript and probably several other languages. But PHP has always been a bit different on some parts, so I decided to test this and came to some interesting conclusions.

The following tests were performed 50 times with PHP 5.2.6.

First I tested the following pieces of code for parse time, $iConcats was set to 5000:

for($i=0; $i<$iConcats; ++$i)
{
$o .= ‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’;
}

This parsed on avarage in 0.0065 seconds.
Next up was the array equivalent:

for($i=0; $i<$iConcats; ++$i)
{
$a[] = ‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’;
}
$a = join(”, $a);

This parsed on average in about 0.0187 seconds. That’s almost 3 times slower!
I deliberately added the join statement as it completes the comparison. And dor the more visually oriented amongst us, google provides nice graphs:

During the measurements I also tracked the memory usage, which had the same outcome, concatenation wins again.

For string concatenation memory usage was ~56Mb. The array version used up ~155Mb. Again the three times! And again, let’s look at some graphs:

And in pie:

So in conclusion (at least for PHP 5.2.6) string concatenation is faster than array joins!

Strings vs Arrays: 2-0.

If you have some test resutls you want to share, please respond below or send me an email, you can reach me at: korneelwever. I’m with the Google mail service .

Google Enhancements

Cipher — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:43:48 +0000

I’ve updated my userscripts for Google with Greasemonkey.

Google Instant Type

I added the Classic homepage to the list where it should add the buttons. I also added a button to search Google News.

Google Own Language

Fixed the layout crash due to Google’s tiny HTML adjustment. Also added support for Google News and Images.

Please feel free to respond if you have a request!

Function list for PHP

Cipher — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:18:36 +0000

Jens Lorenz’ function list plugin is a very handy tool!

After installation, there are a few things you need to customize. For php this is what I did:

Open a php file with some functions
Go to Plugins->Function List->Language Parsing Rules
Click PHP and the ‘add group’ button
Under group rules add the following (without the quotes):
1. function start: “[\t]*function “
2. function name: “[\w]*”
3. function end: “\(“
and click ‘Try’ and view your list being created.
If you like what you see, click ok if not, you can fiddle with the regex.

Keep in mind that this might be different with your code convention, in that case, you’ll have to adjust the second (function name) regex.

At my current job we don’t have that much objects and classes, so I’ll see if i can whiff up a class based regex later.

[edit]
More posts about Notepad++ can be found here: Notepad++ customization.

Notepad++ 5.0

Cipher — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:16:08 +0000

Notepad++ released 5.0 some time ago, and recently a rebuffed version. It’s looking good!

I have some small adjustments for myself and maybe for you.

[ctrl]+[enter] now opens the function suggest by default which was the QuickText Replacer. Look in the shortcutmapper for this one (#36), just clear it and you’re back to normal.

The new function hinting system is great. I wish there was a way to add () when inserting a function name, and move the cursor in the brackets. Additionally, some comment on the function’s use would be helpful on hovering.

I noticed some people were coming to my site to find out how to change the font size, well, this is easy, just hit [ctrl] and scroll your mouse!

For entering some Quicktext please see my Quicktext Wiki.

[edit]
Don’t forget to install the Quicktext plugin which you can find here.

More posts about Notepad++ can be found here: Notepad++ customization.

Vista Broke

Cipher — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:13:21 +0000

My vista managed to screw up big time yesterday, as it tried to install SP1, for the 7th time I think..

I can’t boot and am looking for an external DVD drive to reinstall everything. So devving is moved back a bit..

[update 14/07]

I managed to reinstall everything.. bah, now removing pre-installed crap and customizing…

Imagine Cup ends.

Cipher — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:40:49 +0000

Yesterday we had an amazing party in some catacombs under a bridge (RHCP hurray). It was a lovely scene with the old games we all know, donkey kong, space invaders and good ol’ pacman. If only I could convince my girlfriend to buy this version of the ’surface’ table!

[will re-add picture later]

But I also had some drinks and made some crazy pictures again, here is me with Joe Wilson, who is think is scared:

I also met Martin, Jukka and a really crazy Norwegian girl named Trude:

So much for yesterday, today is going to be a long one, first we have to wait for the train and then the ‘whopping’ 3½ hours ride home. 1st class thou.

Oh and i have to show you this one, a picture of Edwin’s Socrates face:

So this leaves me to closing up this blogpost, but not without thanking Paris and Microsoft for the lovely time here. It was quite an experience!

Imagine Cup Day ??

Cipher — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:07:35 +0000

I lost count, I think day 6. The finalists were announced today and the fact that next years’ competition is in Egypt! That promises some amazing settings.

Just had a nap and in about 45 minutes its off to the undisclosed location, but rumour has it that it is in catacombs beneath the Champs d’elysees. We’ll see. It’s been an amazing journey and the team met a lot of people, got contact info and learned a lot!

Imagine Cup Day 5 (and 4)

Cipher — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:46:09 +0000

So yesterday was a day of leisure. I took the team on a cultural day, which brought us to the Eiffel Tower. We got tickets from Microsoft to go all the way to the top, which is quite an experience. The tickets also allowed us to skip the queueing, which was rather nice.

Ricardo insisted on eating his breakfast ON the Eiffel Tower, which he did. Then we took our day pass for the Metro and headed for the Sacre Coeur, which gave us an excellent lunch setting:

Then we went in the Sacre Coeur and even up to the dome which is a whopping 220 steps up. But it’s a must-go! You walk on the roof and through small openings to get to the dome and then get a spectacular panoramic view of Paris:
This is me thinking it’s excellent.

After about 30 minutes gazing at Paris we had to go down again, and meet some journalists which came from Holland aswell. We sat down in the sun and the team had a nice session. Time to get back to the hotel and off to the arranged ‘dinner’ cruise.

The boat left at 2030 for a trip on the Seine, we quickly found our way to some beers and started mingling. I took some excellent shots:

Day 5

So now it’s day five and I was just in time for breakfast. Some more R&R and then off to the Louvre to set up the showcase and watch the top teams’ presentations. The bus leaves in 40 minutes…

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo

Cipher — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:07:23 +0000

OH NO!
Unbelievable but true, we didn’t qualify for the next round!

There is some Q&A with the judges and we are definately going there.

Team, you did everything possible. We had a complete story. Everything was investigated, all I can say is, job well done. We’ll see what the comment was.