I came across a really good DVD Rip tool for linux called OGMRip yesterday. It can encode DVDs to the H264 format, which is one of the best video compression formats right now. And this tool is particularly good because it ensures best quality by adjusting resolution automatically based on our bits/pixel requirement.

If you’re using Ubuntu, the easiest way to get it is from getdeb.net’s repository. Goto terminal and use the following commands:


$ sudo -s

# echo deb http://ubuntu.org.ua/ getdeb/ >> /etc/apt/sources.list

# apt-get update

# apt-get install ogmrip

You’re done now. Now you can start the program from Applications -> Sound & Video -> DVD Encoder OGMRip. The interface is very friendly, so you won’t have any trouble with it.

Happy Ripping!

Unlike most other linux distros, the PATH environment variable cannot be set in Ubuntu by adding an assignment statement in the ~/.bash_profile script. This has been annoying me for some time and I was trying different things until I eventually thought of googling for it. Here’s how it is done.
There is a file called /etc/environment. This is where you set the path variable. Goto terminal, type

$ sudo vim /etc/environment

to edit it.

Ubuntu is known for wandering away from conventions, but why did they have to change this? The /etc/environment file is ok, the ~/.bash_profile method doesn’t work anymore. That means, there is no standard startup script in Ubuntu except the System -> Preferences -> Sessions dialog. Nobody would want the terminal to lose its power. I hope the Ubuntu developers know what they’re doing.

I’m at Einstein Engineering College now. Some 100 km away from my college. It’s an event called Empower.IT, organized by ELCOT, a government body dedicated to the cause of improving the quality of man power in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu.

Its huge here. There are more than 10 thousand people inside the campus, and there are loads of stalls and showcases. And talks by the industry hotshots, and ofcourse competitions.

Among the showcases is this cool internet cafe with Wireless Connectivity sponsored by Tulip IT Services, Chennai. And it rocks! There must be atleast a 100 computers here, all great looking Dell N-Series, all brought here by ELCOT. And all of them run SUSE Enterprise Linux! The’ve got some motivation!

I’ve just got the results for the preliminary round of the coding event. I’ve been short listed, and the real event starts in a while. I’l get a laptop if I come first. I have to rush now. I’m running a bit too high on adrinalin right now, I guess.

I don’t know why, but I’ve been concentrating a lot on eye-candy stuff these days. I was getting extremely annoyed when I found that my nVidia display card won’t support compiz(the desktop effects thing on System -> Preferences in feisty), which is the ultimate eye candy for any Linux computer. I was googling for more eye candy and I found gDesklets to be interesting.

And here it is! My desktop with a cool looking analog clock, an analog calender, and analog sticky note, a countdown and ofcourse, Chad Smith’s picture.

It was available on the Debian repository, so installing it was extremely easy. Alright. Now I gotta go and download more desklets!

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Tags: gDesklets

The Office Open XML(OOXML) document format of Microsoft has been rejected by ISO as an international document standard. MS had been trying very hard to obtain ISO certification for its format. MS had even published an advertisement to promote the OOXML in Linux for You!!

And as always, MS has failed again to please the experts. Phew.. There is some space to breathe now on the internet. But MS has never relied on the experts for its revenue. It has always targeted the Layman. If MS had targeted the experts, it would have been nowhere by now!

Anyways, OOXML is not an international standard, and the Open Document Format(ODF) of the Free Software community is an international standard. MS should better add support for the ODF in their Office Suite.

Microsoft is desperate, but it appears it isn’t going to make it. Its hopes to get the new OOXML document format certified by the ISO are fading away slowly. Here’s why:

1. Several countries have expressed their disapproval for OOXML.
2. India and more countries have officially given the middle finger to OOXML.
3. As many as 200 design flaws have been detected in OOXML.
4. Unlike what MS claims, editing OOXML documents manually makes them unreadable in Office 2007.
5. Communities opposing the OOXML appear to be way too active!
6. There are rumors that MS has already resorted to bribery and corruption inside the ISO to get their format certified.
7. The WashingtonPost has reported that MS has been forcing partners to vote in favor of OOXML.
8. Rea Maor had predicted that MS will be doomed.

Meanwhile, the OpenDocument Format(ODF) has already become an ISO standard. Infact, it is even supported by MS.The only thing that bothers me now is that poor Microsoft’s first Open initiative is a failure in the making.

By the way, why isn’t anyone thinking that this issue is getting too much attention world-wide? It might be encouraging to see MS fall, but does it really matter to us? Don’t we have bigger things to think about?

Downloading applications from the internet and installing them every time can be a tedious job. This article, for Ubuntu newbies, contains a small introduction to the Debian package manager and using the Debian DVDs as software sources and installing applications in Ubuntu. You’ll have to download the three Debian DVD images, and burn them on DVDs. Downloading with BitTorrent is the easiest way to get Debian.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve screwed up the computer center at my department by installing OpenOffice.org and removing MS Word. Its true that OOo has better formatting features, equation editor and things, but it does not provide full support for MS Word Documents.

When MS Word Documents are opened in OOo, there are several formatting errors. The content looks totally out of place! Especially when there are images or equations in the document. Files saved using OOo in MS Doc format are not displayed properly when opened in MS Word. I’ve been trying to find out ways to get this to work properly, but i’ve not found a solution as yet.

I guess I’l have to remove it and get MS Office back again. Lets hope the formatting problems are corrected atleast in the next release of OOo.

Most of the times I go through the web for finding tweaks for Firefox. I found these articles are very interesting and tweaks contained in these articles help me to improve the performance of Firefox.

1. About:config Entries - This is a reference to about:config entries which you can get basic understanding about those entries.
2. Ten Mysteries of about:config - about:config tweaks from Linux Journal.
3. Top Firefox 2 config tweaks - Written by Gina Trapani from lifehacker.com.
4. Firefox about:config Hacks and assorted tips - Some greate performance hacks for Firefox from Tech Yantra.
5. Make Firefox much faster about:config tutorial - Video tutorial from youtube.com and you can find more from related video list.
6. The secrets of about:config - Firefox Hacks from computerworld.
7. Firefox Tweak Guide - 12 page Firefox tweak guide from tweakguides.com.
8. Firefox Tweaks - Firefox tweaks for network connections and plugins.
9. Firefox performance tweaks - Another Firefox performance hacks.
10. Firefox memory tweaks - High usage of memory is some time a problem for Firefox users. This guide will help you to tweak the memory settings.

These guides some times contain same tweaks but I prefer you to read these and choose the best things.

Matlab was one of the reasons why i had not scrapped windows from my harddrive completely. I was searching for free equivalents and found GNU Octave. Octave is a cross-platform Open Source alternative for Matlab.

Octave uses the same commands as Matlab and has almost all commands as Matlab. It uses GNUPlot, which has to be installed separately, to draw graphs and the graphs plotted appear to be better than Matlab.

Though Octave does not have a GUI, and OctaveWorkshop doesn’t look as good as Matlab, it still is extremely friendly, and can serve as an excellent alternative for Matlab.