Archive for the ‘Tech Stuff’ Category
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Is this 2000 Once Again?
Sitting here reading feeds. Two consecutive posts from TechCrunch:
One is about real value, real innovation where investments will generate real return, where the other is pop piggy-backing on services piggy-backing on trends with a monolithic trend beacon still not generating revenue. Yet the pig is snubbing out $6 billion?
Are we already knee-deep in the next IT bubble waiting to burst as a horrid aftershock to the economic crisis a few years back? There’s so much money being funneled into non-revenue generating business these days… These months… These years…
Just me?
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Stacking Turds – Or How I Learned that Homeless People are More Fortunate than ASP.NET Professionals
DISCLAIMER: What you’re about to read may contain harsh language. It contains stories of feces-throwing gorillas and crying children. Opinions will be biased. Proceed at your own risk!
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Make Google Searches Suck Less with the Help of Firefox (on Ubuntu)
As Google Search gets smarter, it gets dumber, too. And extremely annoying. Yes, I meant “mobil”, not “mobile”, that’s Danish, so please stop rewriting it and forcing me to click and confirm that yes, I did mean “mobil”.
Are you, too, tired of having Google rewrite your queries? Well, if you take a closer look at the request querystring that’s generated when you correct Google’s “corrections”, you’ll notice a token, “nfpr” (or None of those Fucking Pathetic Rewrites, as that acronym must clearly mean) that’s set to 1, i.e. true.
So, using this, combined with the knowledge gained from fixing the broken search accelerator in Linux Mint, we can add this token to our defaults so that Google will revert to its previous, less intrusive, and less retarded behavior – the simple link “Did you mean blah blah blah?” placed just under our search input box.
$ sudo nano /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/en-US/google.xml
And add,
<Param name="nfpr" value="1"/>to the list of parameters. Exactly where doesn’t matter, just anywhere. Ctrl+O to save. Restart Firefox.
Probably there’s a Windows and Mac OS equivalent file, but you’re gonna have to find it yourselves
Now if we could only have a token, like poracawmq=1, for “Please Only Results that Actually Contain All Words from My Query”, Google Search might just start to be genuinely useful again!
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Fixing the Broken and Mangled Search in Firefox (4) on Linux Mint
So, while being busy doing other stuff and therefore postponing actually getting rid of this buggy Mint version of Linux Mint 10 KDE (which is basically 100% Kubuntu minus Canonical goodness and instead tons of additional bugs and Mint branding everywhere), I was getting pretty bitchy about the totally fucked up search in my Firefox 4 installation.
This Mint-branded partner search crap is everywhere and not so easy to get rid of. The actual search bar was easy enough – manage the search providers, delete Google from the list, then search for new providers with “google search english” as keywords. Reinstall, and that part’s taken care of.
Then there’s the deal with the “Mint Enhancement” add-on crap that can be deleted for everyone by just doing a,
$ sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/firefox-4.0/extensions/mint-search-enhancer@linuxmint.com
Easy peasy, but might need to be done again after an update. At least until replacing the OS itself with Kubuntu.
The more tricky part is fixing the address bar type-to-search feature which on Mint 10 KDE results in awful Mint-branded results in what appears to be Thai. Leaves me hungry for veggies, rice, nuts and coconut milk, but not satisfied with my results. The language part is the easy one. It seems the Mint branding fucks up the preferences’ lang setting, which is specified as [chrome://global/locale/intl.properties] – clearly supposed to be an instruction to fetch the system’s locale and use that, except it obviously doesn’t work. Go to Preferences > Content > Languages and fix it manually.
Left is the annoying Mint branding itself which apart from being ugly removes all the usual Google search options, modifiers, and Google account links at the top. The problem can’t be fixed by visiting about:config or anything like that. The problem lies deeper, as a mangled system-wide Firefox search engine XML configuration file. Go to a console and type:
$ sudo nano /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/en-US/google.xml
Remove everything in it (ctrl+K deletes an entire line) and paste this text in it:
<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/"> <ShortName>Google</ShortName> <Description>Google Search</Description> <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding> <Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon;base64,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</Image> <Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" method="GET" template="http://suggestqueries.google.com/complete/search?output=firefox&client=firefox&qu={searchTerms}"/> <Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.google.com/search"> <Param name="hl" value="en"/> <Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}"/> </Url> </SearchPlugin>
If you prefer search results in your native language, you would want to not include the <Param name=”hl” value=”en”/> line which tells Google that, “Yes, I know I’m currently in Denmark, but I still want to see search results in English, please!”
Once again, an update might want to mess with this file. Keep a link to this post just in case
Restart Firefox and enjoy not being kicked in the teeth by Mint any longer.
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The Trail of Destruction Left by J. River Media Center
When I was a Windows guy, I was a warm advocate for the commercial media jukebox application, J. River Media Center. It’s an extremely versatile app sporting a sleek design and a wealth of features, while being able to play back pretty much every codec known to man and interfacing with a slew of portable devices. I’ve bought every release from when it was called Media Jukebox, IIRC version 8 to version 14.
Having gone exclusively Linux on all but one of my systems (my Digital Audio Workstation and gaming rig), I’ve been trying to get JRMC to run there. WINE is sort-of possible using the latest beta and a number of winetricks, but you’ll find yourself restricted to the audio-part of JRMC only, and the app will crash when you sneeze. Even if it didn’t, the interface is so horrible slow that it’s practically unusable (the UI is slow on Windows, too, but nothing like this).
I also tried setting up a VMware guest system exclusively for JRMC, but that left me with two major headaches:
- Skipping sound (which doesn’t happen on a non-virtualized Windows, mind you, JRMC never skips in that scenario. Ever.)
- A volume output level from the emulated soundcard in VMware of about -20 dB (perceived). That means more than 3 bits lost, and an effective audio resolution of one tenth of the original file. Not acceptable.
Neither of these issues can be blaimed on JRMC, I’m just very verbosely tracking my moves that led me to where I am today
So, I searched high and low for some acceptable alternative in Linux. I never expected to find anything even remotely as advanced as JRMC – basically I just needed something that properly supported Album Artist tags at the very least. I was quite shocked to find not only an application that offered the same level of versatility and customizability as JRMC, but actually one that surpasses JRMC, namely foobar2000, or fb2k for short. Wait, you might say, isn’t that a Windows app? Yes, yes indeed it is, but this is one that runs great under WINE. There’s the occasional glitch and crash, but in general it runs perfectly, and it’s extremely fast. In fact, it uses about the same amount of CPU time (~4%) running maximized and playing audio with an oscilloscope and a vu meter visualization that Amarok uses doing nothing, minimized to the system tray. If that doesn’t speak for quality code, I don’t know what does.
Anyway, I could go into the longest rant about how absolutely kick-ass fb2k is, but I have to remember the subject of this post, The Trail of Destruction Left by J. River Media Center. Sure, that’s somewhat a dramatic title, but if you happen to be a JRMC user, fear not – your audio is safe, it’s just the tags that may be destroyed.
Over the course of time since I started seriously migrating from Windows to Linux, I’ve tried different players. I’ve been bitching a bit to myself about how messy their tag systems were, as all my very neatly organized files would show up pretty much as organized as a drunken drug-addict with alzheimer’s. Even those claiming to support ordering by Album Artist would just show my files all jumbled about. I never thought to blame JRMC.
That is until now, when I have a tool that actually lets me scrutinize my tags in detail (and a HEX editor for that extra-detailed look-see). I discovered two shocking facts:
- About half of my files were missing field values completely, mostly in the ALBUM ARTIST field, but also in other fields. This is only visible outside JRMC and explains why my files always got all mixed up when I tried using them in other players.
- Now that I’m cleaning up tags and removing unwanted ones (including “TOOL NAME” and “TOOL VERSION”, added by JRMC), I find that all my carefully written COMMENT tags have been completely destroyed by JRMC. It looks in a way like the missing tags mentioned before, along with other app-specific meta data, has been serialized into the COMMENT field by JRMC.
Here’re some good examples of how great that can look (some of the shorter ones):
- 0000402A 000046CB 0001767B 00018F15 00066C63 00066DD0 0000910D 00008E85 0006FE4E 0006C3D6; 0; 00000000 00000210 000007F0 0000000001923800 00000000 016CBB6E 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000; 39448
- 000012D7 00001073 00007D39 00004020 0002230E 0002230E 00008000 00008000 00009C6E 0000755E; Music Never Dies; Media Center; 12.0.529; 37622; Vive la Fête
- , AG# 6B2E6829; Media Center; 12.0.529; 35796; µ-Ziq
- LAME 3.91 -k –alt-preset standard -q 0; Media Center; 12.0.473; 38718; The Strokes
- .; 38353
And so on and so forth. Isn’t that lovely? Wouldn’t you just love it if all your comments looked like that? Well, you can have them look like that, too! Just use JRMC!!!
Now, I can only guess at the reasoning behind this mayhem, and so I will. It looks like JRMC is serializing metadata that it needs and putting it into the standard COMMENT field. I would guess that it’s using the COMMENT field because that field is available whether you’re using APE, ID3 or some other tag system. Now you have to wonder why anyone would ever destroy a user-editable field by shoving in application logic. Why you wouldn’t use a TXXX field since they’re free for anything you like. And why it would put the (album) artist name in there in the first place.
At least it had the decency to leave its DNA so that the phorensics crew could identify the criminal, the public could try it, and the judge sentence it to death. RIP J. River Media Center. You will not be missed.
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The Fall of Google
Lately – and by that I mean in the last year or so – searches on Google have yielded less and less useful results. The most prominent problems have been,- Google Trends farmers that produce bogus and useless content based on search popularity statistics harvested directly from Google Search itself. These results will clutter most of any searches for new trends, new products, news, well -anything new, really, and you’ll often find that Twitter is a better search engine for getting genuine results instead of wading through hordes of useless spam on Google.
- Google apparently chosing to revert to mid-90s behavior with OR’ing every word in a search query to produce more results rather than AND’ing them to allow the user to refine and narrow down the search to achieve more accurate results.
I experienced a rather “amusing” effect of the latter example yesterday, where removing two words from my search phrase reduced the search results from about 1,000 results to two results. That’s a smoking gun right there. I forget the search, as I was busy working, but just now I was trying to find out how well the podcast aggregator app Juice would work when installed under WINE (Linux middle-layer for running Windows apps).
Searching for “juice wine”, well obviously that would not yield very useful results, and Google is no target for blame on that account. Lots and lots of tips on making wines and juices.
Second try, “juice wine podcast”, well ok, there are lots of podcasts provided out there, even for people making wines and juices, so I take that one on me as well.
Third time’s the charm, right? “juice wine install“ had to be pretty much unambiguous. I mean, you would never install wines or juices, would you? But, of course, as it turns out, I now fall prey to the newfound mid-90s style of searching that Google is currently practicing. Let’s ignore that “install” keyword, shall we?:
Now, we should always expect search results that aren’t exactly what we wanted. Words mean a lot of things, you know. But note that just one of those pages actually contain the word “install” in their body text. Just. One. And this is the first page of Google’s search results.
I don’t know about you, but I’m desperately looking for an alternative to Google Search these days. Bing is even shittier. What to do?
UPDATE 2011-04-25:
Missed the screening of “Littlerock“, and wanted to see if there’s a torrent out there to fetch instead. Of course, Google insists on “correcting” Littlerock to “Little rock”, and usually when this happens, I try to explicitly tell google not to give me any of these results by prefixing this with a minus (means “exclude hits that contain this text”). Don’t know about you, but this result provokes me:
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