Author Archives: wrostek
Xbox One “HDMI in” Screen Freezing
The Xbox One with an HTPC via its ”HDMI in” (running XBMC or some other software) is awesome. Switching between Xbox games, Skype, Netflix and your HTPC is very smooth, and something I have waited a long time for. However, …
Ubuntu network-manager wont start VPN at boot
I recently ran across a problem where network-manager would not start my VPN connection at boot, even though I have the ‘Connect Automatically’ option checked. It turns out this is an existing bug that has been around for a while, …
How to compile a single module in Ubuntu linux
Occasionally you may experience problems in a specific kernel module that requires a patch. Once patched, you can follow these directions to compile only the module affected, saving a bunch of time. Assume the following, for this example: You are …
Ubuntu fail to login after upgrade to 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin)
Just upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin), and it was working somewhat until after a few reboots it would not allow me to login any further from lightdm. A quick look in /var/log/auth.log showed that I was receiving the …
Simple JQuery hover effect
Here is a simple hover effect you can implement with JQuery. I use this trick occasionally when I want to give buttons or images a hover effect, but don’t want to spend the time creating alternate versions of each image, …
Ubuntu 11.10 Waiting up to 60 more seconds for network configuration…
Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot was released last week, and has brought a few issues with it. One distressing new feature I found was that when booting it would hang for around a minute with the message ‘Waiting for network configuration…’ …
Development with the Canada Post shipping API
If you are developing a shopping cart and require real time shipping estimates via Canada Post, they provide an excellent and simple API you can use via CURL. The first step to using the API is to contact Canada Post …
Ubuntu Linux 100% digital audio ( pulseaudio AC3 passthrough with a52 encoding )
For a long time, my Ubuntu machine could only play AC3 passthrough sound or Desktop sounds separately. If I was watching a DVD, and accidentally made a desktop sound effect the DVD AC3 audio would stop, and the desktop sound …
Poster Grabber via PERL and IMDB
OK, so you are sitting at home, looking at your collection of legally obtained movie trailers. But what is missing? The cover art! wouldn’t it be great to have the poster image of each trailer stored with it? Yes! Luckily, …
Shell Script for recursive video transcoding
So here is the situation, you have a folder of videos in MKV format that you need demuxed and converted to avi’s using xvid codec and AC3 sound. How to do this? First step would be to run mkvextract to …
