Denis Papathanasiou

The internet is full of idiots writing rubbish for other idiots to read. If I want to find something out I will ask someone or read a book.

— Bill’s guide to the internet

MPlayer is a terrific DRM-free multimedia player.

It also contains Mencoder, which is a great tool for ripping dvds (among other things).

Mac Ports has two versions available, MPlayer and mplayer-devel but neither of them built properly on my Mac (OS version 10.5.8).

Fortunately, the pre-built binaries at this site worked beautifully.

After downloading and unzipping them, I moved the two binary files, mplayer and mencoder, into /opt/local/bin so they appear in the default command-line path.

Since Apple’s built-in DRM-enforcing DVD player is set to startup when a DVD is inserted, I changed the default action in the System Preferences under Media Preferences to be “Ignore” for the “When you insert a video DVD” option.

Now, I can play any DVD track with mplayer in Terminal, like this:

mplayer dvd://[track number]

MPlayer also supports other playback options like subtitles, etc. (docs related to DVD playback are here).

Ripping a DVD track is more complex, but the docs have good examples to follow.

I wrote this shell script to simplify the process:

#!/bin/sh

# source for mencoder options:
# http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-vcd-dvd.html
# (using 11.8.5.2. NTSC DVD example)

if [ $# -eq 2 ]
then 
  mencoder dvd://$1 -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf \
    -vf scale=720:480,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 \
    -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:\
keyint=18:vstrict=0:acodec=ac3:abitrate=192:aspect=16/9 -ofps 30000/1001 \
    -o $2.mpg
else
  echo "mencoder_dvd_rip.sh [dvd track number] [output filename]"
fi

So to rip track 0 of a DVD (which is usually the main movie track), all I have to do is this in Terminal:

 mencoder_dvd_rip.sh 0 movie

Ad-Hoc Distribution, for letting beta testers get copies of iPhone apps before they’re available in the AppStore, has been around for a while now, and there are several guides on preparing and installing them.

Beta testers who use Windows Vista face a significant gotcha when they try to install the Application.zip file: the default “Extract All” action does not unzip the app correctly, and it won’t install on iTunes.

WinZip or WinRar can do the decompression without creating a problem for iTunes.

Even better, if you know which beta testers are using Vista, you can just create an .ipa file for them, which can be installed directly in iTunes without having to do any unzipping.

Once the beta test is over, all beta testers (whether they use Vista, XP, or Mac OS X) need to go into their filesystem to remove the ad-hoc profiles, otherwise iTunes will keep re-adding them to the iPhone with every sync.

This guide notes the exact folder for the different operating systems.

Workstax is now live.

Amazon Web Services currently lack built-in DNS nameservers.

So if you want to associate a domain with a running EC2 instance, you need to provide your own:

You first need to find a DNS hosting service. By DNS hosting service, I mean a service that will allow you to set A records and/or CNAME records for the domain mydomain.com.

Your DNS hosting provider will give you the names of their DNS servers. You will get from two to five DNS servers, for example, ns1.dnsservice.com, ns2.dnsservice.com, etc. You then go to your domain name registrar (in this case, yahoo), and set the name servers for mydomain.com to ns1.dnsservice.com, ns2.dnsservice.com, etc.

Finally, you go to your DNS hosting service, and set CNAME records or A records to point one or more hostnames at your instance. For example, you could set:

mydomain.com A xx.xx.xx.xx
*.mydomain.com A xx.xx.xx.xx

Amazon won’t endorse a specific service, but I found EveryDNS worked well.

Here’s what I did to get it working:

1. Create an account at EveryDNS and login
2. Type the domain into the box under “Add new domain” and click the “(basic)” button
3. Login to your domain registrar and change the DNS nameservers to point to ns1.everydns.net, ns2.everydns.net, ns3.everydns.net, and ns4.everydns.net
4. Back at EveryDNS, click on the domain under “Primary Domains”, and set the A and CNAME records:
   • A: put the domain in “Fully Qualified Domain Name”, and use the IP address provided by AWS in “Record Value”
   • CNAME: put the domain with a “www” prefix in “Fully Qualified Domain Name”, and use the domain name in “Record Value”

From “Growing a Business” by Paul Hawken:

When your business encounters problems and messes, stay with them. Find something valuable down in the dreck. Work with it until you know that mess so well it will never develop again, until it becomes your friend. One of the greatest errors of much business literature today is its attempt to instill certainty with checklists, must-dos, the “motherhoods”, ten principles, axioms galore, and other assorted truisms.

And:

If I will always have problems, if every business will always have problems, what’s the difference between a good business and a bad one? A good business has interesting problems, a bad business has boring ones. Good management is the art of making the problems so interesting and the solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.