nemesis's Journal

This took a while to figure out.

I wanted a generic command that would resize the video to 320x240, regardless of whether the source was in widescreen or not; and if widescreen, then crop only the middle section out.

Note that the original framerate is maintained. You could probably save some more space by dropping the framerate to 15 or 20 fps.

If you want to save more space, try dropping the audio bitrate, and adding :vbitrate=500 to lavcopts.

mencoder -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -oac lavc -ovc lavc
-lavcopts
aglobal=1:vglobal=1:acodec=libfaac:abitrate=128:vc odec=mpeg4:keyint=25
-vf scale=-3:240,crop=320:240,harddup -noskip -af
lavcresample=44100 -o output.mp4 input.avi

Enjoy.

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Most of you already know that I got a shiney new Nokia N85 last weekend. The dilemma I faced (similar to my Eudora escapades) was how to get my messages, contacts and calendar entries from my old phone to my new one.

Migrating from my 6610 to my E65 was a breeze. Use the latest PC Suite to take a backup of the old phone, and "restore" it on the new one.

But for some reason, PC Suite 7.1 (the latest at time of writing) didn't like my E65. It would happily take a backup of it, but threw up a warning saying that it would only restore on a phone of the same model.

Strange, I thought. So I tried one of the backups I had lying around that was created in a previous version of PC Suite off my E65. Strangely enough, it would happily restore all my data.

So, in four quick steps, here's how to keep all your stuff:

• Install Nokia PC Suite 6.82 (make sure you don't have any other PC suites installed).
• Backup your E65.
• Install the latest E65 (the old one won't work with your new phone).
• Restore your E65 backup.

These steps probably work for many other "older" models, e.g. N95 or even a 6610.

Enjoy!

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Optus has gotten into a tizzy, because a journalist claimed that their network "sucks" in terms of speed and performance. Optus (and other mobile carriers) constantly make claims that mobile "broadband" is equivalent (or better!) than fixed-line broadband.

IDC [presumably commissioned by Optus] said that mobile broadband is now more affordable, offers larger download quotas and is faster than comparable entry-level ADSL plans.

IDC couldn't have got it more wrong. That reporter was well justified in bringing Optus up on appalling network performance. According to IDC claims they "found the average download speed to be 1,747Kbps", and "latency averaging 447ms".

Sure, 1.7Mbps is comparable to 1.5Mbps ADSL1 (but it's practically dialup speeds when compared to ADSL2+). The latency on the other hand is atrocious. 447ms latency (almost half a second) is too laggy to do much more than basic web browsing. Say "bye bye" to voice over IP, online gaming, and SSH. In case you're interested, latency on ADSL is around 30ms. Dialup generally has a latency of around 250ms. At 447ms round trip time, any AJAX application (Google Earth, etc) will be excruciating.

With performance like this, it's no wonder that journalists pull up carriers about over grandiose "mobile broadband" claims.

The sheer fact of the matter is that you can't argue with Physics. Wire-line communications will always outperform wireless communications.

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With the media doing minimal fact checking nowadays, getting published is easy. Here's a quick four-step guide:

• Invent an impressive sounding profession. "Palaeoclimatologist" is a good place to start.
• Invent some "horror" statistics that will affect large numbers of people in your target audience. The whole of the ACT is a good example, if you're targeting the Canberra Times.
• Write a press release.
• Submit.

Voilà. You're practically guaranteed publication.

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