Dave's Tech Blog
A Third Eye on Technology

On Wednesday January the 21st of 2009, Bob and Louise Church celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary!  Surrounded by close family and friends they held a formal ceremony in their living room to renew their vows.  It was a very beautiful and touching event and I did my best to record the ceremony for the family and friends who were unable to attend.  You can click here to download the video.  The video is encoded in Xvid MPEG4 format.  If you’re running Windows, and it does not want to play, download and install the K-Lite Codec Pack which will add the necessary video decoder needed to play this video.

Following the ceremony, Bob was asked to open up a surprise package that had just arrived in the mail a couple days earlier.  Inside were dozens of copies of his new book (click here to preview and purchase your own copy) which was assembled by close friends of his who are part of an Internet based writers group (Word Catalyst Magazine) which Bob is a member of.

I of course recorded video of the opening of the package the books were delivered in as well as his initial reactions to the book.  You can download and view that video by clicking here.

Unfortunately there was little opportunity to capture the author himself reading from his new publication as there were some hyperactive grandchildren making a lot of distracting noise.  But don’t you worry!  I will be keeping on Bob to record a few readings from his book for his biggest fans to view.

One of my favorite online radio streams is the Chillout station found at www.di.fm.  I’ve not listened to the station for a few months because it seemed like I would hear songs I’ve heard many times before more often than songs I’d never heard at all.   I used to dedicate myself to making sure I had some form of music playing for me in the background while working on the computer because every now and then there’s a REALLY cool track that will come on.  As it happens, today was one of those days where I turned it on and within a couple minutes a very cool track was on that I’d never heard before.

I’ve been looking around on the web trying to find a high quality copy of this song and it’s very difficult.  What I did find was a copy of the song on Youtube.  You’d be surprised how often the most rare of songs end up on Youtube; it’s perfect for looking up those difficult to find trance and techno songs nobody listens to (according to eminem, and from the looks of the “view count”, he’s right).  So I just wanted to share the song I heard and liked so much.  Bare in mind that the audio quality is a little sub-par, and it’s recommended that you wear headphones or have some decent bass in your audio setup.  Enjoy!

I would have made the title of this post “How to remove the Keyring password manager in Ubuntu Linux” but that’s kinda long…  Anyway, you might be wondering what the keyring password manager is.  It is a built in feature of Ubuntu that remembers passwords for things like FTP account logins, Evolution Email accounts, your wireless network authentication passwords, etc., and locks them all behind a kind of Master Password of sorts.  So for example, lets pretend that the password for your wireless network was 64 characters long and was just a bunch of random numbers and letters that you’d only be able to remember if you were some kind of freak savant mathematician.  The keyring password manager would remember this for you, but will only allow the system to access and use that long password after you grant it access to the keyring.

As nice and handy as this might sound to security buffs, it’s struck me as a minor inconvenience.  For starts, if I were to configure Ubuntu to automatically login to my account after I turn the computer on, I would then also be asked to type in my keyring password so it would connect to my wireless network.  This becomes a bigger problem if, for instance, I were to connect to my computer remotely and had to reset it for some reason, like applying a recent kernel update.  The snag there would be that after restarting, my computer would boot up, but since I’m not physically sitting in front of it, it would sit there waiting for me to enter a keyring password before it would reconnect to my wireless network, and I’d have to go home or ask someone else to type in the password for me.

So what I’ve always wanted to have happen is this:

• I start or restart the computer by remote (such as through SSH or VNC).
• After booting it automatically logs into my account and connects to my wireless network without asking for any passwords along the way so I can VNC right back into the system with no further trouble.

I’ve finally learned how to do this, and it’s stupid easy to do.

There is of course a few security drawbacks about doing this.  For starts, if any person were to gain physical access to my machine they’d be able to connect to my wireless network without needing to enter a password. Then again, if someone I don’t trust has somehow gained physical access to my machine I might as well go ahead and consider it to be compromised.

Now, if the PC were in an office with a bunch of random co-workers always around, I’d be a lot more concerned.  If that were the case, I’d have that puppy locked down with a power on password, disable booting from the CD-ROM/Ethernet/USB in the BIOS, perhaps have a GRUB password and be working with an encrypted HD partition, and of course auto-login would be disabled so I would be required to enter anywhere from 2 to 3 different passwords just to login to the system.  But this thing is in my house behind two large dogs and a dead-bolt locked door, functioning as a server that requires a password for me to access it by via SSH or VNC anyway.  So for this particular PC, I see little harm in opting out of using this security feature.

So here’s how you get rid of the keyring manager.  Please note this will erase saved passwords you have so be sure you know or remember them before you make your computer forget them:

1. Open up your Home Folder by clicking Places>Home Folder
2. Press CTRL-H (or click View>Show Hidden Files)
3. Find a folder called .gnome2 (it has a period at the beginning of the name) and open it by double clicking on it
4. In side of the .gnome2 folder, there is another folder called keyrings.  Open it up.
5. Delete any files you find within the keyrings folder
6. Restart the computer

After you restart and login (if you’re automatically logging in) you’ll probably be asked to enter your wireless networks WPA/WEP encryption key.  After you type that password in, the keyring manager will appear to let you know that it would like to handle the storage of that password and lock it away with a new keyring password.  The box looks like this:

Instead of typing in a new password, leave both boxes completely empty and click Create.

You’ll then be asked if you know what the hell you’re doing:

Go ahead and click Use Unsafe Storage.

WARNING: Doing this creates a new file in your ~/.gnome2/keyrings/ folder called default.keyring and it will now house passwords IN CLEAR TEXT and not in an encrypted form.  So it is imperative that you are certain no untrustworthy persons can access your user account (either physically or by remote) or they will be able to easily open and read this file and obtain many passwords (for things such as FTP accounts, SSH, e-mail accounts, etc).  Proceed with caution.

From here on all keyring stored passwords you enter will not safeguarded behind a master password or encryption.  Whether or not you want to do this is entirely up to you.  I personally have had enough of the keyring manager and consider it kind of annoying.  But as I said before, you may have certain environmental factors that make having a master password over the rest of your passwords a good idea.  Keep in mind that the keyring password manager has absolutely nothing to do with your administrative/root privilages password that has to be entered any time you want to apply updates, or add/remove software.  You will still have to type your account password in for these actions, and that is something I am quite comfortable with. I’m just happy I don’t have to have to ask my girlfriend to type in a keyring password every time I want to restart the computer while I’m away from home.

First and foremost, the video below IS NOT from any of the 405 GB of High-Definition 1080p video that was released by somebody via three torrents recently (see a couple posts back about that).  Those videos are still in the process of being downloaded by all those who are willing to wait a couple of months for them to come down the wire.  What has been much easier to download is video that has been shot by the fans themselves.  The very last show on the Lights In The Sky tour was held in Vegas and an announcement was made to the fans in advanced that there would be a “very relaxed” camera policy (not like that wasn’t already the case).  The intent was to get as many people into the venue with as many different cameras as possible.  The result… well here’s an example of what the result may very well be.  ALL of the video and audio were captured by fans and not via official outlets (soundboard audio, $4000 HD video cameras, etc.).  This video is 100% amateur, and has been been organized together and edited to produce a very satisfying piece of entertainment.

The song below is called In This Twilight.  It was the last song played at every concert of the tour (so long as there was time for an encore, and there often was).  It is one of several very well made fan-mix videos, and you can find more listed here.

Here is one more of my favorites entitled 28 Ghost IV.  The name itself means nothing (it was simply track #28 out of 36 instrumentals released last year on an four-part album called Ghosts I-IV).  No lyrics.  Just beautiful music.  Enjoy!

I can’t wait to see the HD fan-mixes in a few months!

Bob Church, father of my girlfriend Kristin, has published a new book!  Actually… his friends did it for him as a surprise.  You see, Bob has been a member of a little writers group on the Internet for a few years.  His writings have inspired and captivated many fellow authors.  But soon after the picture on the cover of the book was taken in the summer of last year, Bob was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Near the end of 2008, Bob and his wife Louise decided to move back from Moberly, Missouri to Topeka where their two daughters, their son and two grand-daughters live so that they could more easily spend his last days together as a family, despite their inability to sell the house they left behind in order to make the big move.  Chemotherapy sessions were already underway for two months when this happened and the move took a dreadful toll on Bob’s health.  Visits to the emergency room became frequent.  Seeing Bob awake and in a good mood was  rare.  And everyone was very worried.  Then, roughly a month or two after moving to Topeka, he decided to end his chemo after his doctors concluded it was doing him more harm than good.

Since that time his health and energy have seemed to very gradually increase.  We’ve spent several evenings together as a family watching the entire HBO series The Soporanos, one episode after another.  We’ve also continued this little tradition with another HBO series called Deadwood, which (all profanity and vulgarity aside) echos a lot of the kind of writing and dialoge styles Bob most appreciates. And just yesterday, Bob decided to whip out a laptop and get his ass on the Internet for the first time in nearly 3 months!  So for those of you out there who know Bob but live far away, you’ll be quite pleased to learn that his spirits have been the best I’ve ever seen in a very long time and it is a breath of fresh air.

Bob’s very own copy of this book will be in the mail and shipping to him very soon.  It is slated to make an appearence in about a week and I’ve been asked to video his opening the package when it arrives so his friends who cannot travel up can see his reaction.  Perhaps if I twist his arm a little, he’ll read us some of his writing, too.

The book is available for purchase from blurb.com by visiting this address.  Prices start at $13.95 for the softcover, $30.95 hardcover and weighs in at a whopping 400 pages.  You can even preview the first 15 pages of the book online before purchasing.  So go check it out!  Buy a copy!

Holy crap!  If I didn’t already know that my favorite band is also the coolest on the planet, now I can be certain.

Nine Inch Nails released a surprise (belated) Christmas gift for their fans yesterday: 405 GB of unedited concert footage, filmed with 4 to 7 HD video cameras between three seperate shows.

Victoria
Portland
Sacramento

This is not your typical download to say the least.  It will probably take me weeks to download just one of those.

There is currently an open-source project being headed up at http://thisoneisonus.org/ which originally formed together to create a full length DVD using video that was filmed by fans at the concerts.  Now we have all of this HD video to toss into that mix.  So if you can’t wait to download all of the video above, you can be rest assured that there will eventually be a professionally edited mix of all the video into one much smaller download.

Edit: Be sure to check out my other posting — How To Backup A DVD With Ubuntu Linux.

So one of the cool things I was asked to do for someone a couple of months ago was show them how to convert an AVI video into a playable DVD that they could give to a friend.  I had originally suggested VSO ConvertXtoDVD program, which I had a lot of good luck with in the past.  But I wanted to do the same thing in Linux and I found a program that I think does a better job.  It’s called DeVeDe, and you Windows users out there will be happy to know that there is a Windows version of this software available for download.  But for us Ubuntu Linux users there’s an easier method used to install it on your computer.

To install DeVeDe in Ubuntu Linux, click on the Applications menu at the top, then the Add/Remove Programs at the bottom of the menu.  Once the application search tool is loaded, do a simple search for “Devede” and you’ll find it in no time.  Simply check it off,  click the apply button and you’re in business!

How To Use DeVeDe To Convert Video Into DVD

The first thing that will appear when you load DeVeDe is a little window asking you what kind of conversion you are wanting to do.

For this tutorial we’re going to use the default option of “Video DVD” and click OK.

Next we’re presented with this interface.

The box that says “Titles” already contains one object called “Title 1″ and to the right we see the Files that are currently contained within that Title (none for the moment).  The word “Title 1″ is what will currently appear on the DVD menu, so you’ll probably want to change that later by clicking on the properties button below the Titles box.  For now, you want to click the Add button below the Files box so you can add an avi (or other video format) to your new DVD Title.  When you click add, you’re presented with this:

You’ll want to click on the bar I have highlighted in green above to open a file browser and select the video of your choice.  Also, if you live in America you will want to make sure the video format in the above box is set to NTSC.   Once you have a video selected, the OK button at the bottom will become clickable and you’ll be taken back to the previous interface with the Titles and Files boxes…

Above you can see that I have one video in the files box, which is essentially a container for “Title 1″ to the right.  I could add more videos to the files box for that title if I wanted to create a collection of videos that would play back to back after selecting “Title 1″ from the menu of the DVD after it’s burnt.  I could also create new titles to act as containers for other videos, which would present multiple items in the DVD menu.  But in this case, we’re just wanting to burn a movie and be done with it.

Notice that the current Disc Usage in the above picture shows that the video I selected is currently estimated to consume about 50% of the DVD, at a video stream bitrate of 2001 Kbits/sec.  We’d like this data rate to be increased so better video quality will be retained after the conversion, as well as to make use of the rest of the otherwise unused DVD space.  This can be done by clicking on the Adjust Disc Usage button I have highlighted above.  This will automatically adjust the data bitrate of all the videos that are about to be converted.  It’s also a handy for reducing the bitrate for videos in case you’re trying to force 2 or more videos to fit together onto one disc, so long as you’re willing to compromise video quality in the process.

Also notice the destination media size selected just to the left of the disc usage percentage.  Single-layered DVD’s (4.7 GB) are selected as the default destination media size by DeVeDe.  If you intend to burn the output iso file to double-layered 8.5 GB disc, click on that box that says 4.7 GB DVD and out will pop a drop menu that will offer “8.5 GB” as a size option.

Take the time to click the “Preview Menu” button so you can see what it will look like.  If you click the Menu Option button, you’ll get this window:

This will allow you to customize the menu’s appearance.  There aren’t any fancy effects or animated menu options available with DeVeDe, but for most people DeVeDe does more than enough.  Remember to rename the “Title 1″ in the Titles/Files window so it will reflect the content you are about to convert.

Once you are satisfied with your video selection and the main menu of your disc, you can click the Forward button.  Up will pop this box that simply asks you what you want the output iso file to be named:

Your Home Folder (zeke in the above example) is selected as the default destination for your output.  You can change this to whatever you want.  In the end, you’ll end up with an movie.iso (or whatever you named it) file that will need to be burnt to a DVD.  To do this, all you have to do is right-click on the file and select “Open with CD/DVD Creator” or “Open with Brasero” or even “Open with Gnomebaker”.  I’m sure there are others, but all three of these burning utilities will get the job done.

It is recommended that you use DVD-R over any other blank media (such as DVD+R) for maximum compatibility with stand-alone DVD players.  Not all DVD players are capable of playing home made DVD’s, but most are.  And if yours is one of those that won’t play it… perhaps it’s time to spend some money on yourself and get a new one.  There are some nice cheap Philips DVD players that are additionally capable of playing Divx/Xvid avi files, as well as mp3’s and jpeg slide shows for about $40 at wal-mart.

Otherwise, happy burning!