Archives for category: technology

Quick Tip: Pruning your Gmail inbox down to size

January 25, 2010 //

I’ve been hooked on Gmail for quite some time. In fact, as I’ve likely mentioned before, I get a duplicate of all the incoming email to my work address shoved into my Gmail account because searching and locating email using Gmail is exactly 1.23 million times faster than it is in Outlook on my work machine. Did I mention I hate Microsoft Outlook? Anyway, I’ve been bumping up against Gmail’s 7+ GB free storage limit lately and thought I’d share a quick tip on shaving down that mailbox size using a couple of simple filters. This may be something that everybody knows already, but at the risk of being late to the party, I thought it useful enough to post anyway.

First of all I had already set up label filters for a lot of my email which makes sorting out chat logs, mailing lists, work email etc. a whole lot easier. So I have a label called WorkEmail. In the interest of saving space, I wanted to hunt down files that were work-related, had an attachment, and were older than a specific date. For that I used the following query:

label:WorkEmail has:attachment before:2008/02/01

So obviously this gives me a list of work emails that have attachments and are older than February 1st, 2008.

Now, one thing missing from Gmail is a way of filtering out attachment by type. However, you can use the filename: filter to get that functionality. So if I’m wanting to maximize my cleanup, I might want to filter out the emails that contain pdf files so I would use:

label:WorkEmail has:attachment filename:pdf before:2008/02/01

Once you get the list of filtered emails, click the ‘select All’ link which will highlight the conversations on that page and give you an optional link to select the complete list of emails matching your criteria. Then simply dump them to the trash folder, go through them if you’d like one last time, or just delete them to gain some space back in your Gmailbox.

Have you got any better Gmail hacks for saving space? If so, share it in the comments.

Categories technology, web

Snowflake USB Microphone on Linux – with sample files

August 11, 2009 //

Today I picked up something called a Snowflake USB microphone by Blue in hopes of improving the sound quality of my screencasts. And while I haven’t had a chance to fully test it, I can say two things: First, it’s a very significant improvement on the sound I was getting from my Logitech USB headset. Second, it is not going to be without its challenges, at least for now. Let me explain.

Let’s hit the problems first. As I’ve seen on several posts on ubuntuforums.org, I seem to be having this weird behaviour where the microphone captures sound fine, but when the audio is played back, it’s at half-speed. That’s only a click or two away from fixing in Audacity. I post-process my screencast audio in Audacity anyway so that’s not a deal-breaker for me. I’m not sure what the problem is, but I know I’m not the only one experiencing it. Unfortunately I have yet to find a fix for it (granted I haven’t really done much of a search yet). I’m running Crunchbang 8.10 and love it, so moving to a newer kernel isn’t an option, at least not immediately.

The other problem I have is that RecordMyDesktop (run either from the gui or commandline) does not play well with this mic. I get a repeated ‘broken pipe’ message when recording and the audio is choppy and almost indecipherable (and at half-speed as noted above). Definitely unusable. I am thinking of recording the audio separately (but at the same time) using the Gnome Sound Recorder. It seems to record the audio perfectly well (despite the half-speed problem). I’m hoping I can just launch the audio recording alongside a video-only recording by RecordMyDesktop. I always end up splitting the audio from the video anyway during my post-processing. The only additional challenge here is making sure everything is in sync in the final product.

The sound quality improvement over my Logitech USB microphone is remarkable. While there is still some background noise, when I remove it in Audacity I don’t get that underwater, over-processed effect. The sound is also much warmer and fuller than what the headset was giving me. Not a big surprise I guess. I think it will be a significant improvement to my screencasts. The microphone comes mounted to a bracket which sits on top of my laptop screen (with protective rubber pads to prevent any marking of the laptop). I was wondering about how the distance vs sound relationship would work, but I have to say that at normal speaking volume, having the mic at that distance seems to sound pretty good. The levels are a little low, so I may have to rig up an impromptu mic stand using my mini Manfrotto tripod or something if I’m not happy with the placement. The build quality is good and it comes with a nice little case that can hold the usb cable along with the microphone itself.

Now I’m just hoping that recording the audio separately comes off as easy as it sounds. Time will tell, but I will definitely try a dry-run in the next few days to see how much harder the workflow is.

The only other major issue I have with my screencasting (besides coming up with good ideas and finding time to do them) is this dang mini-sized MS mouse that I use. It works fine, but the clicks seem terribly loud. Damn you Microsoft! Maybe a Logitech would be quieter. I’m either going to have to hunt down a new mouse with much more silent clicking or take this little baby apart and see if I can quiet down the switches somehow - if I don’t break it first.

I’ve linked to two sample audio files I recorded. Both files were recorded using the Snowflake microphone mounted on my laptop screen about 16 inches away from my face directly in front of me. Both files were amplified slightly to raise the levels using Audacity (and sped up to eliminate the half-speed problem). The first file is the raw file, the second file is the one where I’ve removed some of the background noise.

http://rfquerin.org/misc/snowflakesample_raw.mp3

http://rfquerin.org/misc/snowflakesample.mp3

Categories linux, screencast, technology

Blender Video Editing Screencast No. 3

July 23, 2009 //

Okay so it’s been about 5 months since I last posted a Blender screencast. Guilty as charged. Let’s move on.

I’ve posted my third screencast about editing video using Blender. This one is a quickie at about 9 minutes in length. It covers a few very useful keyboard commands along with an introduction to using the proxy feature to really start boosting your editing efficiency into high gear.

Also worthy of note is that I did the post processing in Blender as well. I wasn’t 100% happy with the flash video rendering output I got from Blender on this one, but this will just take some further tweaking, mostly to limit filesize and maintain quality. So for this screencast, the last step involved rendering to avi from Blender and then falling back to my mencoder script for the final conversion to Flash.

You can find this third screencast right here.

Here are the links to my previous Blender screencasts No.1 and No.2.

Expect more in the way of Blender screencasts and Blender video editing info. Troy Sobotka and I have been discussing where to go with this. Of course I’m going to try and drag Heathenx in as well so I can share the blame around.

ps. For some weird reason, I had a helluva time trying to get the flash version to work properly for this episode. Kudos to Heathenx for doing an OGV version (for those with Firefox3.5) with a Flash fallback for those with other browsers. Heathenx, you da man!

Categories blender, linux, screencast, technology, video

The Kodak Zi6 – Sample Videos and Thoughts

April 12, 2009 //

eyestill Back in February or March, my trusty Flip Ultra camera stopped working. Granted, I wasn’t being all that careful with it, even thowing it into my coat pocket along with my car keys and other stuff. Shame on me really. I was disappointed that it died, under the manufacturer’s instructions I took out the batteries for 72 hours and hoped that a full cold reset would do it, but she was a no-go.

So facing a week long trip down to Myrtle beach at the end of March, I decided to buy another low cost video camera. I was looking at the Flip Mino, but it was nearly $300.00 up here and just didn’t look like something I should be spending all that money on. I was heading back to the Flip Ultra at $158.00 but then noticed that Best Buy was selling the Kodak Zi6 for about $168.00. It had significantly higher resolution than the Ultra and sounded like the build quality was a step above. I bought the Kodak, and a month later, I have to say I’m quite impressed.

The build quality does seem to be a significant step up from the Flip Ultra. It’s significantly heavier and wider but has a much larger LCD screen on the back and a much more durable feel to it. Slightly scared because of what I did to the poor Flip Ultra, the new camera has been shuttled back into it’s velour pouch every split second it’s not it use. Slightly paranoid I guess.

The Kodak shoots in (technically “HD”) 1280x720 at 30fps or at 60fps. It will also shoot in VGA (640x480 like the Flip Ultra), and it will take 3MP still shots. I have largely stuck with the 30fps 720p mode, but I’ve also taken a few stills which have not disappointed me too much either.

Clearly though, this is not a $1000 camcorder. I find the quality to be quite good, but it’s very lighting dependent. Although as many people I’ve discussed this with mention, almost any consumer camcorder loses significant quality in low light conditions. The Kodak is much the same and probably worse. I’ve used it happily indoors under normal lighting conditions, but of course like any handheld video camera (or still camera), it really shines when outdoors or under good natural lighting.

The camera is almost as simple as the Flip Ultra was. It has a nice flip out USB plug, and get’s detected in Linux as a mass USB storage drive. Very simple. It does let you fast-forward and rewind through videos under playback which is nice as well. Unlike the Flip Mino, this camera uses 2 AA batteries. And even nicer is the fact that for $168.00, they give you a nice pouch, two NiMH batteries AND a charger for them too! Yes, daddy.. indeed the batteries ARE included with this toy. However the SD card it stores video on was not. Luckily I had a 16GB SD card that my wife recently received at some company shindig. I never had a use for SD cards before this (my DSLR uses CF), so it was just good luck for her to have it at the same time I needed it.

Note also that the camera has a macros switch for close-up work. I’ve rarely used it, but I have included a still shot I took earlier today of my daughter’s eye. You can see it’s quite nice and you’ll notice the reflection of the Kodak right in there too.

It ain’t all rainbows and flying ponies though. There are two things which may cause a little concern…

First, the 1280x720 video is quite nice. Nice enough that it wouldn’t play back smoothly on my 5 year old P4 desktop system (even with a 7 series NVidia card). However on my new laptop (a Dell Studio XPS13) it plays back full screen just beautifully. So it may be great to shoot HD resolution video, but be aware that you may not be able to play it back in full resolution if your computer is getting somewhat long in the tooth. Once converted down to something smaller like 720x405, my P4 system played it no problemo.

Second, the video it produces is in MOV format. That is, it’s really h264 with AAC audio encoding. This is fine for many people. However if you’re interested in editing this video in Blender, you may want to re-encode the audio to something that the current stable version of Blender likes more (like MP3). You can do that using ffmpeg like this:

ffmpeg -i input.MOV -vcodec copy -acodec libmp3lame -ab 128k output.MOV

Blender will then happily accept the video and audio for editing.

I’ve included a few sample files in this blog post for those interested in evaluating the quality of the video and images. Note that the video sample is done under what might be the best quality light for a cheapy camera… overcast conditions. Your mileage will vary under more harsh lighting conditions. The camera is not lightning quick to in moving from dark to light spaces, but what do you really expect for a sub $200.00 video camera. The normal still shot is indicative of a tiny sensor. The light is fairly harsh so you’ll see a significant loss of detail. This won’t match a good 3MP point and shoot, but it might be better than your average cell-phone camera under these conditions.

I’ve included an original full res video clip (30 sec and about 30MB), another sample full res clip with the audio re-encoded to mp3 using ffmpeg above, one short macro video sample taken of the CD player display in my car (dust and scratches anyone?) and two sample full res images, one macro and one normal.

And although this didn’t play a part in my choosing the Kodak, I would be remiss if I didn’t point you to Troy Sobotka’s video which he shot with this Kodak Zi6 and edited in Blender. Just to show you what even a cheapie camera like this can do when in the right hands.

As I found with my Flip camera review way back when, there usually aren’t a lot of people willing to post a full res video sample, and I can’t see the usefulness in reviewing a camera and then posting a YouTube sample for people to evaluate. Hopefully it helps some people thinking about purchasing a cheapy video camera like this.

Full Resolution Original File (30MB, 30 sec)
Full Resolution File with audio encoded to mp3 instead of AAC (30MB, 30sec)
Full Resolution Macro Video sample (7MB, 8 sec)
Full Resolution Normal Shot
Full Resolution Macro Shot

Categories photography, technology, video

Portable Ubuntu

April 9, 2009 //

A few days ago at the suggestion of my trusty pal Heathenx, I downloaded and installed Portable Ubuntu. I must say, I’m quite impressed.

I’ve used Cygwin for quite a while now to get a bit of my Linux fix while working on my XP-Pro box at work. I use it mostly to run a proper bash terminal so that in concert with Dropbox, I can use the fantastic Task command line todo list management tool ubiquitously between computers at work and home. But I’ve always wanted to run things like Gedit, or other Linux based stuff here at work. I once tried getting Cygwin/X running here to achieve some of that but could never seem to put the pieces together and get it working.

I also run #! in a VM for more heavy duty Linux needs (and incidentally I’m now running #! full time on the new laptop and I’m loving it!), but I don’t always want to have to fire up Virtual Box whenever I want to use Gedit.

In steps Portable Ubuntu. With it I get a nice standard Ubuntu menu with a smattering of basic apps, but I now get access to Synaptic, the repos, and who knows what else. I would be surprised if there weren’t some limitations, but so far it seems pretty darn good. I’ve taken a full size screenshot of my desktop at work (1920x1200) showing things like synaptic and gedit working side by side with AutoCad and Chrome. I’ve got the Ubuntu menu over on the left with Auto-Hide turned on so you can’t really see it there.

Anyways, if you’re stuck in a Windows world at work, but want a nice way to mix in some Ubuntu goodness, then give it a shot. The whole shebang actually uses the Xming X Server which I believe is the thing I could never get working with Cygwin/X. But Portable Ubuntu seems to have done the trick.

Categories linux, technology

No more reasons to cry the blues – I’ve got a new laptop!

March 31, 2009 //

Well this is a first. I’m actually composing this post on a laptop. Yes indeedy, the first laptop I’ve ever owned. Since this is my first, I won’t pretend to know all about them and give you a 5 page in-depth technical review. Instead I’ll just give a hopefully quick run-down and then get back to procrastinating about posting new stuff about Blender, my new handheld video camera (the Kodak Zi6), and a couple of magazine ads I’ve recently done. Never mind doing a new Inkscape screencast or two among many other things.

It’s a shiny black fingerprint magnet of a machine. It’s a Dell Studio XPS13 laptop which you can check out here: http://bit.ly/uIPM0

It’s boatloads faster than my aging P4 desktop PC. It has 4GB of ram, a dual core P8600 processor running at 2.4GHz and an Nvidia 9400M G card, a 13.3” WLED display, 320GB harddrive, and a lot of other bells and whistles (like a very slick backlit keyboard).

I’m still getting used to it, but I can say that I love the keyboard and although I’ve managed to come to slight grips with the touchpad, I will definitely be buying a little corded mouse to go along with it.

It came with Vista (they don’t offer this one with Ubuntu yet, at least not here) and I ran that for as long as it took me to download a Jaunty demo image and burn it to CD. Vista was shiny but I found it hard to believe how little functionality actually comes with a stock install of windows.

I was a little nervous going into the Linux install (leaving it as a dual boot for a while just in case I have to test out any hardware glitches), but shouldn’t have been:

1. Jaunty installed flawlessly in about 18 minutes (impressive).
2. Everything seems to work from the webcam to the touch key volume and media controls above the keyboard area.
3. Wireless worked no problem at all for me.
4. Hibernate, suspend and resume all work fine.

So there it is. So far I love this laptop. The bootup speed of Jaunty seems really good (around 20sec from the Grub loader to the login screen and then about 5 sec to a working desktop). And the speed at which stuff actually installs (aside from download speeds) is vastly superior to my old PC. I feel so spoiled.

Now to get back to “work”. I’ve installed Inkscape, and just realized that v2.48a of Blender is already in the Jaunty repos so that was nice. I’m looking forward to doing my video encoding chores on this little speedster. I had to do a little search to get Dropbox going in Jaunty (see http://bit.ly/15UM9) but that works great now too (I’m sooo dependent on Dropbox these days). Installing RecordMyDesktop and getting my screencasting setup working and tested is likely the next order of business.

Let’s hope the next blog post isn’t so long in the making, I’ve been working/playing with lots of stuff lately so there should be no shortage of ideas and information to share.

Categories blogging, linux, technology

More Blender thoughts and Bed Jumping

February 22, 2009 //

I’ve been battling what I’m pretty sure is strep throat for a day and a half now. Unfortunately a combination of extremely crappy sleep and my poor excuse for a desk chair have conspired to give me the gift of a major back ache at the same time. Oh joy.

Tonight I turned to Blender for a little distraction (do you know I have been able to go about 15 full minutes with nary a painful swallow?). One of the first things Troy Sobotka suggested to me was having a screencast to show how to set up the Blender video sequencer for more efficient editing, and in the process give people some insight into the customizability and power of the Blender interface. The main problem with that is I am not all that familiar with the Blender interface. So I’m trying to use it in more little projects and get accustomed to it.

I did manage to get it laid out somewhat like Troy had suggested to me, with the most frequently used tools in places that make sense:

I’m thinking that the next screencast I do will show the novice Blender user how to go from the default Blender Video Sequencer window layout into something like I’ve shown in the screenshot.

I’ve also posted up another little diddy using footage that I shot with my Flip camera on a tripod (although being a complete novice, I moved the tripod slightly during the filming duhhh). The one thing I was trying a few times to get right was applying slow motion to a single clip. I used this wiki page as a reference for achieving that effect, but I still kept having problems getting things to pick up full speed at the end of that segment. More to learn I guess… Anyway, here’s what I came up with very quickly. I didn’t include the slo-mo clip, I just wasn’t happy with it. It’s a short little flippy video thing. The sort of thing I wanted a video editor on Linux to do quickly for me. Blender is making me so happy these days. Now if it could only cure strep throat and massage my back.

Update: Video now revised to show one segment in slo-mo. Thanks heathenx!

Bed Jumping - revamped from Richard Querin on Vimeo.

Categories blender, family, linux, technology, web

Really basic Blender video editing screencast: Part 2

February 14, 2009 //

A few weeks back I did my first Blender screencast showing how to do a few simple things with video using Blender. In that one we covered editing and joining clips, fading between clips and exporting our video. In this second screencast I cover how to fade into and out to black, add a simple title screen and how to add a soundtrack to your video.

It’s all pretty simple once you get the hang of it, and keep in mind that I’m very much a newbie at Blender so expect a few flubs. In fact there’s a slight train wreck about 3/4 of the way through when I forgot how to create a new node for editing sound curves. I didn’t edit it out simply because I couldn’t be bothered and I also thought what the heck.. if I’m learning this application, then why pretend to know every little thing about what I’m doing when I clearly don’t. Feel free to shake your head in disgust when you watch that part.

Also, as you might have seen in this post, unlike me, Troy knows what the hell he’s doing with Blender. Two good things have come of this, we’re discussing what other in-depth tutorials might be worthwhile when it comes to introducing people to video editing in Blender and even better yet, he asked me how I screencast. I think it would be great if someone who really knows this stuff was able to do a little teaching.

Even though we’ve started this discussion I still thought it would be worthwhile to throw out this second screencast because I think once people get over the initial hurdle and actually produce something (anything) with Blender it only gives them more confidence to spur them on and learn more. That’s how I am anyway. I like to try challenging things, but it’s damn nice to actually achieve something worthwhile quickly to maintain and build my enthusiasm.

Anyway, I’m likely rambling (as I started to at the end of this screencast btw) so let’s cut to the chase. Here’s the link: http://screencasters.heathenx.org/_misc/bve/bve_02.html

Note: If you change the file extension on the above link from ‘.html’ to ‘.flv’ you can download the FLV file directly and watch it offline in something like VLC if you’d prefer. This goes for the first Blender screencast as well.

Categories blender, linux, screencast, technology

Another home video edited with Blender

February 4, 2009 //

The other night I put together another video using a bunch of Flip videos I took of my daughter skiing. I’m getting more familiar with Blender now and it took me only about an hour to slice and dice together 9 clips, add start and end titles and some music (The concept of fair use is not dead in my mind if you care to ask). I think Blender has definitely turned into my video editor of choice. Expect more screencasts on this topic.

Skiing At Hockley Feb 01-09 from Richard Querin on Vimeo.

Categories blender, life, technology

Again with the Umpteen Editions of Windows??

February 3, 2009 //

I give up. I don’t understand the big benefit of offering your customers six or seven different products, each essentially the same but crippled to varying degrees. And the bigger question is whether people will still pony up several hundred dollars for an OS that is supposedly lighter, cleaner and faster.

I’m not sure why I was expecting something even remotely different this time out. I wish them all the success in the world.

Okay. Maybe not so much.

Categories linux, technology, Uncategorized