New Blog

Hi guys,

Just started another blog http://blvdeer.co.cc/blog

Why a new blog?
1. This blog is about technical only. The will be about everything.
2. I wanted to try wordpress.
3. This blog is blocked at my office.

You never update this blog, do you think you will update the new one?
Yeah that's kind of true. Let's see what happens.

ASCII Arts

What is ASCII Arts?

There are some websites with wonderful contents like

http://www.ascii-art.de/
http://www.chris.com/ascii/index.php

There are many other websites that allow you to create signatures using ASCII Arts.
Yeah they are cool, but have your heard of JavE??

It is a small cool software that allows you to draw your ascii arts by yourself. Its like using Ms-Paint. It is really simple. It allows usage of many fonts and the collection can be expanded with downloadable font library (they call it Figlet).

It also allows converting an image into ascii art and creating animations.

It is a freeware. They have pointed on their website that it will shift to GPL license making it opensource but it hasn't happened for sometime.

Go ahead and try it out:

http://www.jave.de/

Money Speech

Have you read the "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand? Well, I'm sad I never finished because of my neck issue. But I kept remembering a speech on Money by one of the lead characters. It really puts all I think and agree about money. I'm sure most people I know/like will agree with me. You can read it here http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2158115/posts

Fixing Hindi on Android

Recently I rooted and moded my Spica to Android 2.2 froyo by Cyanogenmod but it looks like they haven't put much thought to Hindi/Nepali fonts.
Even earlier the vowel signs were all messed up.

But I couldn't find any fix for this instead I found a work around in opera mini.

First let me tell you one thing, opera mini is a must app.

Open opera mini, in the address bar type

config:

In the bottom, there is an option

Use bitmap fonts for complex fonts

Set it to YES

And it will work only in opera mini. Well something is better than nothing.

Upside down skype video on Fedora 14 64bit

Yes that happens on my laptop:

Laptop: Asus K40AB
Web-cam: Chicony CNF7129

It seems Asus mounted the camera upside down in the laptop. The windows driver internally inverts the image and displays it.

Here's a simple trick that I learnt from the ubuntu forums.
If you run skype with:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype

It fixes the issue. But running it that way always isn't a fun.

There are two things to fix this situation:

1. The boring way: Create a shortcut on the desktop, with the above line as the executing application. This fixes the issue for only one user and cannot be invoked by the run command.

2. The fun way:
i. Log in to the super user

$ su

Enter the password
ii. Go to /usr/bin

# cd /usr/bin

iii. Rename skype to skype.main

# mv skype skype.main

iv. Create a new file skype with the below content:
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype.main

# echo "LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype.main" > skype

v. Make the new skype executable

# chmod 755 skype

And you are done. Now running skype will call the above script which has a fix thus the video is displayed correctly.

Still facing an issue? Post a comment.

Update: having issues with LD_PRELOAD, check updated article on my new blog here.

No sound through headphones in Fedora 14

Sometimes there is no audio from the headphones. In that case, open a terminal, run alsamixer, i.e.

$ alsamixer

The alsamixer window is displayed.
Press F6 button and select "HDA ATI SB" from the list of sound cards and press enter.

Check that none of the mixers are mute (MM is shown below them if they are mute). If none are mute and are at high level but still you can hear no sound, go to the Front Mic, press up-arrow key and then the down-arrow key.

This works for me all the time.

Still have a problem, drop a comment.

Installed froyo on my Samsung Galaxy Spica I5700

Just used this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnnX-5FU0O8&feature=related
to install Froyo on to my spica. Its working great.