Watching 720p matroska on ASUS Transformer

Yesterday I decided to try and watch a series episode on my Eee ASUS Transformer (TF101). First, notice that I rooted it, and it is running CyanogenMod, with Android version 4.1.2.

The episode was stored on a SD card. It is not a fast SD card (class 4), but should suffice. The file was encoded with Matroska (MKV) in 720p. So far, so good.

Asked a friend about what player he would recommend. he said there were two, but just reminded of one name: MX Player.

Nevertheless, I didn’t like to notice that MX Player free version has advertisement, and therefore decided to try VLC. I use it on my Mac, and I like it (and its icon), so, why not test?

VLC installed cleanly, but when playing, it wasn’t able to render a single frame. From 5 to 5 seconds it changed the frame, but full of noise and encoding blocks. Gah, #fail.

Then, if VLC doesn’t work, let’s hear my friend suggestion, and try MX Player. Installed the free version, and then, needed to install the codecs package. Didn’t like much this approach… it could download the codecs itself, why to hide them in an app. Nevertheless, it installed with more or less effort. When playing, it was able to render the image perfectly, with acceptable number of frame per seconds (don’t ask how many, I don’t know, but enough to watch smoothly the video). The problem was that I could just watch the video, as there was no sound at all. No, it wasn’t a volume problem. Neither an option. As far as I could get after googling a little, there are more people complaining that MX Player doesn’t play sound when watching a Matroska file. Weird. #fail.

In one of those googling, somebody said he converted the Matroska file to MP4 with Handbrake. That is too much trouble for someone like me. But somebody else said that BSPlayer had a free version for Android that worked. Righto! Downloaded it, it installed cleanly and played the video at first. #win.

FlipBoard

After buying the Samsung Galaxy S3, I installed FlipBoard. The idea is pretty cool, but I am having some trouble using it.

First, it crashes from time to time. I couldn’t find out when/why does it crash, but it seems that it is related to the way it checks for new news, and some extra touches in the screen.

Then, I can’t understand how it updates. Some RSS feeds have news for more than twelve hours, and the application doesn’t show that news. Talking about RSS, it is not intuitive how to add them. At the moment most users consult personal blogs, and not just about a hundred of known websites that the developers find interesting.

And why does the Cover News are only selected from the standard news sources, and not from the RSS feeds supplied by the user?

Javascript Reversi

In the last two days I engaged in developing Reversi, just to learn how the minimax algorithm works. To make it easier to share, and remove GUI toolkit dependencies, my approach was using HTML (a simple page with a 8×8 table), three images (empty cell, black or white cells), a CSS file that fills empty cells or used cells, and highlights movement possibilities, and a couple of JavaScript files (jquery, a reversi-board.js file to handle the board as an object, a reversi.js file to handle the interface between the board and the HTML file, and finally a minimax.js file to handle the minimax algorithm.

At the moment the game is playable, and not too slow. The code can be optimized to make it faster. In the next couple of days I might do that.

Also, regarding the AI code, it can be made better. In one side, the minimax algorithm can try to analyze more moves in advance (only three at the moment), in the other, the board evaluation function can be made better as well.

If you wish to play, go ahead: http://eremita.di.uminho.pt/~ambs/reversi

Lego #5866

Not only children like Lego. I love them. I usually buy Technic, but I like most themes, like City or Creator. This Christmas I found this box being sold at Lidl at a good price, and couldn’t resit buying it.

These Creator sets are interesting, as they include instructions for three models. This one also includes instructions for a forth model, available online. At the moment I just mounted the Helicopter that I show above. Easy construction techniques, as expected for this kind of model, but show that Lego designers just do that: design. They need to learn to play. Take the Copter, play a little with it. You will notice that the undercarriage pieces (that I point above) aren’t well fixed to the Copter body. During mounting, those pieces detach half a dozen times. And it is not that difficult to fix. With two or four more pieces it would get solid.

Panoramic Photos – Hugin

Hugin is the only free alternative to AutoPano Giga/Pro that I have found. In these cases the number of photos is smaller (and mostly horizontal). This tool is not as good as AutoPano in guessing the position of photos, but does a good overall job.

3 x 5 MP photos

11 x 5 MP photo

7 x 5 MP photo

Panoramic Photos – AutoPano Giga

These are my two first experiences with AutoPano Giga. They have plenty of problems. One of the photos has a lot of inconsistencies, most of which are my fault, for moving while taking the photos (and not just rotating over an axis). Nevertheless, I like these pictures.

17 x 5MP photos

13 x 5MP photos

Diablo III – Open Beta/Stress Test Weekend

This weekend was the Beta Open Weekend, or the Stress Test Weekend. This fact is already interesting. I do not know any other company with any similar initiative. This is not only great for them as a mechanism to check how good their servers can cope with the game and some hundreds or thousand players, but also because this works a demo. I would love to know how many players made the pre-order during this weekend. I am one of those.

There are lots of critics about this game. Most of them are funded. The characters don’t seem as dark or scary, but more comic-like, the magic system is more simple, the inventory items are smaller with less detail, etc. I defend that we need to be open to new approaches to the same game. If it is all similar, just an enhanced version with new enemies and new characters, that doesn’t get that interesting (my opinion).

We expect some issues to improve in the final release, but we can’t expect much changes.

I didn’t play much, but my main complains are that for two times that the game returned me a black screen only with a cursor when exiting (Mac OS X), and that it doesn’t have any logic to have a character (witch doctor) whose primary weapon is a jar full of spiders. And, as far as I could dig, I can’t have a standard weapon instead of those “magic” weapons. But probably I didn’t dig enough.

Now, waiting for the release in May.

Lion, and some more impressions

And here I am, back on my comments on Lion. First, I will let you know that the things that I am liking more in this new machine are not related with the operating system itself, but different approaches I am taking, like the usage of homebrew for installing UNIX software. Also, the hardware makes a difference, when you have an i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and an SSD (unfortunately 128 GB of disk is not that much).

Regarding Lion, I already figured a way to put spaces or desktops or whatever you would like to call, behaving like my old spaces, having a shortcut for each one of them, and pinning applications to specific desktops. Unfortunately, I am not able to change all spaces backgrounds at once. I can change one at a time, but I do not have a way to change them all. Unless I destroy all the spaces I have, change the first one, and recreate them all again. Not feasible, specially when you have pinned applications.

The way 801.1X configuration is done is not clear to me as well. Fortunately I got the profile ready to use, but the Lion interface could be more helpful. It says “contact your system administrator for a profile”, but if you are the sysadmin (usually when you buy a laptop) you need to know where to create the profile. So, probably a few more help would be good.

When using Colloquy or Adium with the US keyboard, I can’t type a key and maintain it pressed to repeat the letter. A popup appears where you can choose an accented letter. If you press a letter that cannot have an accent, it gets typed once, and no repeat is done. I do not think this is completely Lion fault, as other applications like Firefox behave correctly, but I do not think this is Colloquy and Adium fault altogether.

Regarding launchpad, I am not able to understand why would I need it. Switch to it and searching an icon is slower than typing the shortcut to spotlight and typing the application name. I wonder when Mac developers stop working on the eye candy and start worrying with the operating system problems. For example, since Tiger (at least, since Tiger that I can confirm) locales are broken for C++ programs.

Unless you have a very good reason to do the upgrade, I do not think Lion worth it. I updated my old mac to Lion only because it was running Leopard (not the Snow one) and a lot of software stopped being supported.

Apple takes one month to deliver laptop

Ordered a Mac Book Pro, 13″, i7 with 128 GB SSD and 8 GB of RAM. Accordingly with Apple Store Portugal, if I buy this configuration, it gets deliver in two to four days.

I did not order directly on Apple Store, I like to have somebody to complain to. So, I ordered in an official Apple retailer, here in Portugal.

The order was done in 3rd November. Today, 30th November, the retailer did not receive the package yet. And I paid half the value already.

As I did not find any contact directly to Infinite Loop, I am complaining here. If you have any relation with Apple, please make them aware. It is inconceivable to wait one month for a laptop, not with the speed technology evolves nowadays, and in a global world, where a package can travel the globe in a few days.

My only comment is, APPLE FAIL!

Samsung Blue Earth is not usable

About an year ago I posted about Samsung Blue Earth. I bought it because it had WiFi, GPS, was blue and a cool solar panel. Unfortunately, it can’t push mail by WiFi (just 3G), the GPS doesn’t work properly, the solar panel is just cool and, worst, it doesn’t have an operating system.

It has a chronometer. You can use it. But you want to take a picture of the first lap? Ooops, sorry, you lost all your times. You need to send a message? Sorry, you lost all your times.

The web browser is from the time of WAP. You open a standard newspaper webpage, and the browser says “The page is too big, might not be properly displayed”.

So, dear Samsung, I feel robbed.