Robert Marcano's blog

Amazing work teammates

It is very rewarding to coordinate a team of developers, that are able to migrate a third-party application to Linux, working without access to the central Host the application requires, and that when We deploy it to the testing site every module works amazingly well, no major bug found yet, only little things that are being fixed in minutes

MP4 tags on a PlayStation 3

The PlayStation 3 uses standard 3GPP tags and does not understand iTunes style tags so every song I imported do not show the correct information, so instead of fixing them on the PS3 (something that does not changes the file, only on the internal database) I wrote a script with the help of AtomicParsley:

#!/bin/sh

addTag() {
        line=`mp4info "$file" | grep "$2"`
        if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]
        then
                command="$command $1 \"`echo $line | sed -e "s/$2: //"`\""
        fi
} 

for file in *.m4a; do
	command="AtomicParsley \"$file\""
	addTag --3gp-title "Metadata Name"
	addTag --3gp-performer "Metadata Artist"
	addTag --3gp-album "Metadata Album"
	addTag --3gp-genre "Metadata Genre"

	exec 3<>"$file"
	read -n 8 <&3
	echo -n 3gp6 >&3
	exec 3>&-

	eval "$command" -W

	exec 3<>"$file"
	read -n 8 <&3
	echo -n mp42 >&3
	exec 3>&-
done

It add a few 3GPP style tags taken from the original iTunes style tags. As AtomicParsley rejects to add that kind of tags on non 3GPP files, the script changes the ftyp field on the file temporaly to 3gp6. The script process all files with the extension m4a on the current directory.

History meme

Everyone is doing this on Planet GNOME, so I wanted to see the results too:

$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head
150 cd
135 ll
105 hg
89 vi
39 less
39 find
37 sed
35 rm
35 tail
35 cat

ll = ls -al.

Addicted to Mercurial SCM

While I was learning how to use Mercurial in order to contribute to the Mozilla platform, I became addicted to it, and with the migration tools now I have access to my repositories with full history on the go, without need of permanent connection to the CVS or SVN server. I can even do offline commits to my local copies.

I had not found a nice GUI for it yet, but being restricted to the command line is not a big reason to not use the powerful offline features. ummmm OpenJDK is stored on Mercurial, and Netbeans 6.1 finall will have support for it.

Folding@home Petaflop Barrier Crossed

Amazing.... just look at the comparison with the other platforms, I am happy to have contributed at least a small part of it. This achievement is just only an example of how well made is the PlayStation 3 that its owners do not hesitate to left it turned on for continuous days doing CPU intensive calculations, with the fans working at maximum speed to reduce the machine temperature.

Nokia - do you know what is Exif?

Maybe I will have the luck that someday some Nokia developer visit this remote page, so I will ask them a little favor, please take your time to learn what is Exif. A long time ago I decided to not use more Nokia phones, but still sometimes when I meet with friends they take photos with their phones and sent them to me, I classify all of them by folders and dates so I have a chronological structure on disk. Yesterday I imported all my photos to my Playstation 3 to be able to show them more easily to family and friends and what i found, no Nokia phone I have received photos store complete Exif information, specially the date and time the photo was taken, and the PS3 uses a lot that info. The workaround was to add the metadata using exiv2 to all those photos

Why Smalltalk

Reading the onsmalltalk.com, found the article named Why Smalltalk, and I share the feelings of the author, you must try Smalltalk to understand why we Smalltalkers think that way. I still dream with an opportunity to teach Smalltalk in an academic environment, because as the article says "Object oriented programming means something entirely different to a Smalltalker than to someone doing OO in another language"

Do anyone need a seasoned Smalltalker demonstration?... hahahaha

New life for HTML against Flash?

According to Mykzilla, according to Bernzilla, according to SimpleBits, according to MTV Labs, mtv.com has switched back to an HTML-based site from the Flash-based site they implemented nine months ago. I am not a big fan of Flash based sites for a lot of reasons, I just only hope web designers take this as an example before choosing a flashy site against a productive site.

�Qu�???? �derechos de autor? �con que se come eso?

Esto es lo que corre por mi mente que deben estar pensando algunos "profesionales" trabajando para el actual gobierno venezolano (o ser� desgobierno). �Por qu� lo digo? solo revisen la rese�a de mi amigo Igvir de como una foto de su autor�a es usada en una publicidad impresa sin su autorizaci�n, y mucho menos de la persona en la foto.

�Ser� posible ejercer alguna acci�n legal? donde los m�s seguro es que se gaste m�s dinero tratando de defender tus derechos que obteniendo resultados satisfactorios.

�Ser� que est�n escasos los cerebros que entiendan lo que es respetar los derechos de autor? o ser� que en Venezuela estamos tan acostumbrados a ver vendedores informales vendiendo cuanta copia ilegal posible, y ver hasta a la polic�a comprando, o escuchar a personas que todos los d�as dicen haber visto una pel�cula nueva porque se la bajaron de internet, que hasta algunos publicistas o dise�adores creen poder hacer lo mismo impunemente

Meme: �Que usas para trabajar?

Aprendiendo de Igvir que es un Meme aqu� van los datos

IBM Thinkpad R50p, 1GB de RAM, disco de 60GB 7200 RPM. Fedora Core 6 x86, y no puedo vivir sin 1600x1200 de resoluci�n
y para las pruebas un Pentium 4, 1GB de RAM, disco de 80GB, con Fedora Core 6 x86_64, Red Hat Enterprise Linux x86_64, Windows XP x86
Monitor CRT de 17"
Un Sony Ericsson M600i para el correo m�vil

Lamentablemente no puedo tener este accesorio en la oficina todos los d�as como si se puede en Google

A ver Nelo.... cuidado con la pelota que te lanzo ahora