In response for the Font Hipsters

Today I read the article “Font Hipsters” by Daring Fireball and have to comment on the last 3 sentences:

We criticize Android for being poorly designed because it’s poorly designed. We favor iOS because it’s better designed. That’s it.

My reaction is:

We criticize iOS for being totally controlled by Apple because you will need to jailbreak your device to run your own apps. We favor Android because it’s open. It’s you who controls your device.

Anyway, the article was actually about the new Android system font Roboto. Personally I really like the font.

Click here to download it.

Batch converting with ffmpeg in Windows

 

As mentioned in my earlier post, ffmpeg is the best tool to convert media files. However sometimes you need to convert a collection files in one go. Of course you can use various gui tools for ffmpeg, but I like to  keep things simple (or complicated, depending on the context).

Basically ffmpeg can only process 1 file at a time from the command line. Linux/Mac users have powerful bash script at their disposal, but do not underestimate Windows

You probably already have a batch file to convert a single file (which contains all the required parameters for ffmpeg). What we need to do is add an additional batch file which will call “converting” batch file.

So, say you want to convert all .mov files in a folder to .mp3. Let’s start by our converting batch file.

convert-to-mp3.bat

IF EXIST "%1.mp3" GOTO exit

@echo Conversion for %1 started on %DATE% %TIME%
ffmpeg -b 128k -i %1 %1.mp3

:exit
@echo %1.mp3 already exists

What does it do: Checks if output exists, if not then converts the input file to .mp3 using ffmpeg.

Next step is to create the batch file which will call the above batch file.

Startconvert.bat

for %%i IN (*.mov) DO (convert-to-mp3.bat "%%i")
pause

As you can see this is a simple for loop calling your converting batch file.

To just convert all the .mov files to mp3, start startconvert.bat and you will be fine.

Lessons which can be learned by playing Angry Birds

Playing angry birds is actually a lot of fun and besides being fun, without even realizing, we train ourselves in the daily business practices as:

Planning
Before you start playing the game, you look how the pigs are located and protected to determine the best strategy would be to beat the level as you should so do in real life: doing an inventory on the obstacles and the possibilities.

Efficiency
As you have limited birds with different abilities having their strengths and weaknesses, you have to be efficient with your resources to beat the level or as in business: get the job done with the resources you have.

Minimum effort, maximum output
The game gives you bonuses for the birds you have not used. By doing a good planning and by being efficient you can achieve the goal with the minimum effort.The game actually somehow forces you to be smart. Same applies in business.

Patience and Perseverance
As you progress in the game the levels get harder and mostly you will not succeed the first time you try. However by trying again and re-evaluating your tactic, you will succeed. By having patience and retrying each time you will be successful.

Experience
As you get more and more experienced the game becomes easier. You will start to see the patterns and develop tactics which you can use to achieve the goal. Your tactics will become more complex as you know how your resources act and even at some point be able to use your resources in a way you initially would not have thought of.

Luck factor
Sometimes you are just plain lucky. Your tactic did not work as you had thought but still you were able to achieve the goal. This is the same in business, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes not. Combined with experience you can even predict if you are going to be lucky and it can be even be integrated in your tactics with a backup plan if you were not lucky as expected.

I believe the success of Angry Birds is due to the fact that the game involves what we do daily (even some of us do without knowing) in a fun way.

Installous download folder

Been experimenting with old 2G iPhone (iOS update, jailbreak, etc). Just a quick note: If you ever wanted to know where the downloaded IPA’s are on your phone/pad, check the /private/var/mobile/Installous/Downloads folder. You can use a tool like DiskAid to connect to your device and store them locally.

I am currently doing the other way around.I am in principle against iTunes and avoid as much as I can, so I will try to see if I can install downloaded IPA from Installous. I think it should work.

PS. Coming back from Android to iOS, I realize how good Android is and how restricted iOS is.

Connecting KIES to the Samsung Galaxy S

 

I have waited until today to update my SGS to Froyo and installed KIES finally. After reading the horror stories about KIES, you can imagine my expectations. It was actually not that horrifying. However I did keep having an issue connecting the phone to the KIES. The Galaxy MTP application says it is connected, but in KIES it states it is trying to connect.

To keep a long story short, while your phone is connected, right click on My Computer, select Device Manager and you will probably see an entry called GT-I900 with a warning sign.

Right click, select uninstall and then disconnect.

Connect the phone again, and Windows will install the drivers again, and you should be able to connect with KIES.

Multiple rundll32.exe instances

 

Recently I have been encountering multiple run32dll.exe instances in my taskmanager (windows 7). Of course I was alarmed and googling indicated a probable virus. I was almost sure that this was not the case on my machine, but better safe then sorry. Scans resulted nothing, which was as I expected.

It was time now to actually investigate what triggered the rundll32.exe. With process explorer I found out it was Chrome…. Aahaa… now I had more context for googling. It turns out that the current Chrome Canary version 9.0.583.0 (Official Build 66097) had this issue.

It seems it has already been fixed in the latest development build, see http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=64006

So if you are using Chrome Canary build and see a lot of rundll32.exe, then you know

Windows 7 Printer not printing

 

Sometimes Windows is not really helping when you never reboot. I like my Windows 7 Sony Vaio laptop, especially the hibernation function. Quick start everytime, but sometimes Windows need to be rebooted, especially when things are becoming slow or stop functioning. This week I had a problem during printing: I was unable to print, each time it failed. My guess was that the printer spooler got lost somewhere.

So a quick tip:

Open command prompt (with Administrative priviledges: right click on shortcut, select Run as Administrator):

Issue the following command:

net stop spooler

and then

net start spooler

Your printing issues will be gone (unless something is really messed up)

(for more info see this link)