Jason's Log

DIY Low Cost NNTP WiFi Digital Wall Clock

Living out on the west coast in a home with all kinds of RF interference, I've had problems getting 'atomic clock' time signals to reliably keep my wall clock properly synchronized. I searched the net for WiFi enabled digital wall clocks that could be configured to use a reliable NTTP server for synchronization, and quickly learned that most such devices were prohibitely expensive. The same can be said for GPS-enabled clocks.

I then glanced down at my desk, where my old Motorola Droid (without mobile service, rooted and upgraded to Android 2.3 via Cyanogenmod) had been sitting for months. It has WiFi of course, so I decided to go looking for a few essential ingredients: An NNTP synchonization application, and an easily readable digital clock app. I found both, and managed to mount the droid near an AC power source:

I've got a carpenter/handyman coming out to make the mounting look nice, but here is the list of ingredients:

• Rooted Motorola Droid without mobile service
• Digital Clock by Notes
• Clock Sync by Sergey Baranov
• Ultimate Rotation Control by FaMe IT (with license)

The configuration:

I installed all of the above applications. I configured Clock Sync to use the default 'pool.nntp.org' server name. I configured Digital Clock to always keep the screen on (prevent screen timeouts), and selected a nice pale orange text color. I configured Ultimate Rotation Control to lock the screen into the orientation I wanted.

I then enabled WiFi on the device, made sure it connected to my home WiFi network, and attached it to the ceiling. This could easily be adapted to work on a desktop or wall.

So I now have a WiFi enabled, NTTP synchronized digital wall clock. Total cost (not including original Droid purchase): $2.99

How unlimited is Verizon's Unlimited Wireless Data Plan?

I've been a Verizon Wireless subscriber for about 10 years now. I signed up for what was called their "450 minutes + unlimted web & email" plan many moons ago.

After upgrading my phone to a shiny new Samsung Galaxy Nexus (SGN), I started watching old episodes of "Heroes" while slogging out my cardio workouts at the gym. About a week later, a data usage warning indicator appeared in the notification area of the phone. I opened up the data usage stats to see that I'd already consumed over 1GB of mobile network data traffic.  Actually, 1.59GB between Dec 27th and Jan 3rd:

Just to be sure this wasn't going to get me into trouble, I sent an email to Verizon Wireless support and in reply I got the following voice mail. The short version: My grandfathered account is in fact as unlimited as unlimited can be. No cap, no additional charges. 

Listen: 

Voicemail_2012_01_03-121437PM

HOWTO: random sleep duration in bash

Here is a quickie shell script (bash) tip. If you ever want to insert a random sleep/pause into a running script:

 sleep $[ ( $RANDOM % 10 )  + 1 ]s

This will introduce a 1-10 second random sleep/pause in the script.  Can be handy at times.

HOWTO: Test JQuery AJAX autocomplete menus with Selenium

I recently decided to give the functional web testing framework Selenium (and the related premium test execution service, Sauce Labs) a trial run, using the Altos Research purchase workflow as a testbed. After a few hours of experimenting, I had run into a stone wall: Automating the test of an jquery autocomplete menu.

In the workflow I wanted to test, users are asked to type the first few letters of the name of a US County into a text field. An AJAX request is then triggered to find matching counties, and a list of matches is presented to users. It looks something like this:

Users are then expected to use the mouse or keyboard to select an item from the menu, which is then added to their shopping cart. Because this technique relies heavily on dynamically created DOM elements and jquery javascript, the normal Selenium Firefox macro recorder/IDE won't record any of the important events required to make the menu behave like it should.

After much experimentation and fiddling around with levers and knobs, I came up with the following successful sequence that would trigger Selenium to correctly invoke the autocomplete menu (the first four entries in this test case). The name of the text field on which the autocomplete is based is 'county_search'. The user will enter the letters 'lake', causing the server to search for all matching counties. One of those matches will be 'Lake County, IL':

 

The trick is in the XPath expression that tells Selenium how to select the item from the dynamically generated menu. As it turns out, the default behavior of the JQuery autocomplete widget is to render each item inside an anchor (<a>) within a list item (<li>). Or in other words:

<html><body><ul><li><a>Lake County, IL</a></li></ul></body></html>

When the script is converted to Java/Junit source code, it will look like this:

selenium.typeKeys("county_search", "lake");
for (int second = 0;; second++) {
    if (second >= 60) fail("timeout");
    try { if (selenium.isTextPresent("Lake County, IL")) break; } catch (Exception e) {}
    Thread.sleep(1000);
}
selenium.mouseOver("//html/body/ul/li/a[. = \"Lake County, IL\"]");
selenium.click("//html/body/ul/li/a[. = \"Lake County, IL\"]");

HOWTO: Watch Blu-Ray Video on the Moto Droid

Update #1 [Sunday, Jan 24th, 9:08am]: I have been experimenting with various encodings and bitrates to try and determine what 'works best'. So far, there is what I've settled upon:

• Video size: 848x480
• Video bit rate: 1000
• Video frame rate: In Handbrake config use 'Same as original'
• Audio: 2 channel stereo
• Audio sample rate: 44.1kHz
• Audio bit rate: 96

Update #2 [Sunday, Jan 24th, 9:08am]: You really should be using the Act 1 Video Player for Android. No really, just go ahead and buy it from the Android marketplace. You WILL NOT be disappointed.

Update #3 [Saturday, Feb 13, 9:09am]: In the most recent batch of encodings, I have migrated away from using AVCWare Total Video Converter to convert the video. Instead, I have opted for a two step video conversion process that starts with MakeMKV to extract the video and audio tracks from the files decrypted by AnyDVD HD, followed by the ever trusty HandBrake to convert that video+audio MKV file into the final form.

Here are screenshots of my Handbrake configuration:

   

Original Post:

Not too long ago I made the upgrade to the Android 2.0 enabled Moto Droid on Verizon. I'd been using the HTC Titan (a.k.a. VX6800) for a while, but accidentally dropped it in the toilet a while back and decided it was time to move on.

In general, I've been thrilled with the Moto Droid and with the Android platform in general. One thing that I wanted to be able to do was watch episodes of the Band of Brothers series that I had previously purchased on Blu-Ray Disc. I just hadn't made the time to watch these at home, and decided that watching them on the Droid while at the gym would be perfect.

After a bit of snooping, tweaking and futzing I put together the following recipe that will allow you to rip and convert Blu-Ray vdieo into a format suitable for perfect playback on the Moto Droid. This will probably work on other Android devices, although video dimensions and bitrates may differ. Also note that this is not free (as in beer) or free (as in speech) - it will require that you purchase two pieces of commercial software.

My list of ingredients:

• Windows 7 64-bit on a Dell XPS M1730 laptop
• Plextor External USB Blu-Ray Drive (from Amazon.com, $160)
• AnyDVD HD by Slysoft (purchased direct for 53 EUR)
• AVCWare Total Video Converter (purchased direct for $50)

The AnyDVD HD application is used to remove the encryption (a.k.a. DRM) from the video files stored on the Blu-Ray disc, allowing the files to be accessed. The AVCWare Total Video Converter is then used to convert the original Blu-Ray video files (stored in a format called AVCHD) into format that can be played on the Moto Droid (MP4 file format with MPEG4 video encoding and AAC audio encoding).

One the following tools have been installed, the process is actually quite simple:

1. With AnyDVD HD running, insert the Blu-Ray disc. AnyDVD will take a few seconds to analyze the disc and apply the appropriate unlocking to disable the DRM/encryption on the video files.
2. Launch AVCWare Total Video Commander
3. Select the 'iPod Touch Widescreen' base profile - this is what you'll use to create a 'Moto Droid' conversion profile.
4. Edit the conversion profile
5. In the video settings section, set the video dimensions to 848x480, set the maximum bitrate to 1000.
6. In the audio settings section, set the bitrate to 96.
7. Leave all other settings as-is. Then save this conversion profile as 'Moto Droid'
8. Next, add each of the video files to the conversion queue. These files are normally stored on the Blu-Ray disc under DRIVE_LETTER\BDMV\STREAM\ and will have a file suffix of .mt2 or m2ts.
9. When seleting files to convert, it is best to view the list in 'Details' view so that you can see the file size. The main episode video files will be very large. The smaller files are usually trailers, promos and advertisements and can be skipped.
10. One the files have  been selected, configure the output directory and press the 'Convert' button.

Once the process completes, you will have a set of .mp4 files in the output directory. You can then transfer these files USB data connection to your Moto Droid's SD storage card. Once transferred, open the 'Gallery' application and look for 'Videos'. Your newly encoded videos should be visible. Select one, and enjoy the show!

WTF: GoDaddy.com Tech Support says AJAX requires Windows

Here is a head scratcher for you:

While investigating a customer-reported problem with one of Altos Research's WordPress Plugin, I had sent off a technical support request to GoDaddy.com's support team. The problem was being caused by HTTP 404 status codes being returned by server-side PHP scripts generating JSON-formatted output. This is a fairly typical thing for a PHP script to do as part of a modern AJAX-powered web application, and our WordPress plugin is one of those.

After Googling around a bit, I did come across another developer who'd experienced similar problems with a GoDaddy.com hosted application, as described in this StackOverflow.com question:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/948116/ajax-404-with-results-using-buddypress

The solution is fairly simple, as it turns out (you must manually set an HTTP status code value of '200'). 

But before I'd come across this answer, I had decided to submit a description of the problem using the GoDaddy.com Technical Support form. About 5 hours later, I received the following answer:

"Ajax requires a Windows operating system; the domain welcomehomenwi.com is on a Linux server.  To switch the operating system of your hosting account, please use the following instructions"

Huh? AJAX in the GoDaddy.com environment requires that you switch from a Linux-based host to a WIndows server? In either case, the WordPress plugin problem has been fixed, and it didn't require that our customer switch their hosting service to a Windows server. Sheesh.

The iPhone App Store and the Lament of the Mobile App Developer

Apple has taken many well deserved punches for the opacity of the iPhone App Store approval process. However, Apple deserves major credit for finally breaking the suffocating control of the mobile service provider over the set applications that can be installed on a mobile device.

In my three years as an engineering manager at Motorola's Mobile Devices business unit, I was approached dozens of times by energetic mobile application entrepreneurs who all asked the same question:

"How do I get my application onto your phones?"

The only answer available at the time was:

"Talk to the mobile network operators (carriers). You'll need to negotiate the pre-installation of your application with each operator for each device they support. One at a time. It will be impossibly hard and likely to fail, so you should probably give up now."

At the time, I had no useful advice on how they could achieve the widespread distribution their business plan depended on. It was depressing.

I am now convinced that Apple and the iPhone App Store have finally cracked that nut. This article from the NYTimes triggered my change in attitude:

To quote:

"Still, the App Store is markedly better than the alternative, says Peter Farago, a marketing executive at Flurry, a mobile analytics company in San Francisco. Gone are the days when mobile developers had to negotiate with major telecommunications companies if they had any hopes of publishing their applications on a mobile phone.

“It took six to nine months to build a relationship with a carrier, maybe a quarter-million to get the infrastructure built, and the company took 50 percent or more from each dollar,” Mr. Farago says, a process that limited access to mobile platforms. “Apple has helped create a much healthier middle class of developers and expanded the pie for everyone.”

This is indeed a watershed period for the developer of mobile applications. The break between carrier and application control (AT&T + iPhone) now has the momentum. We already see signs of this spreading from carrier to carrier (Verizon, Sprint) and platform to platform (Android, WebOS, Blackberry).

Finally, a nice dose of free (free as in speech) in the world of mobile devices. 

YouMail.com is listening to your voice mail

I have been using the free version of the YouMail.com voice mail service for a while now, and have been happy with it. It offers much better web-based access and customizable responses than what my mobile service provider (Verizon) offers. So far, so good.

Early last week I received an email from their marketing folks encouraging me to enable the free version of their voicemail -> text translation service. The first 7 transcribed voicemail messages are free each week. It sounded like a good offer - I don't get too many voicemails anyways. The service comes with two quality level settings - good and super-mega-good. They do warn you that the super-mega-good quality option does incur a slight delay in message delivery.

I went ahead and opted for the 'super-mega-good' option, wanting to see how far computer translation technology had come recently.

When I started receiving the messages, the quality level seemed too good to be true. I was completely amazed by the detail. For example, a donation solicitation from my alma mater was transcribed as:

"Hi, my name is Laura and I'm a sofmore at Illinois Wesleyan. I'm one of more than 1,800 students who recieve financial aid so I know first hand the importance of support from alumni and friends. I see you've made donations to the university in the past and I was hoping you might give a gift again this year. Now more than ever a gift of any amount is greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time and thanks in advance for your support. Have a good night."

The two things errors in the above message immediately tipped me off - the spelling of 'sophomore' as 'sofmore' and 'receive' as 'recieve'. A computerized transcription engine would be unlikely to make phonetic errors like that, I thought.

Then, after a few more, the clincher:

"Hey, Jason. It's Cathy. We just left. We are on our way to the Freeway. So, we'll probably there in about 20-25 minutes. It's about 9:40 right now. So let us know where you wanna meet. Bye"

The capitalization of the word Freeway was the give-away this time. It just smacks of an error only a human transcriptionist would make. Perhaps someone out there can prove me wrong, but as far as I can tell, YouMail.com must be using a pool of humans to listen to and then manually transcribe voicemail messages when you choose the 'super-mega-good' quality option.

Can you say 'privacy concern'? I can't wait for the voicemail from my doctor asking me about scheduling a rectal exam!

Feeling conflicted about Net Neutrality

The news is out that the FCC plans to take a more formal stand and formulate specific rules related to Net Neutrality. This is one of Obama's campaign promises, so this turn of events is not particularly surprising. My first reaction to the news was along the lines of 'That sounds like a good thing.'

But now that the reports have begun to trickle in about what this might really mean in practice, I'm starting to get more and more worried about the implications.

Depending on the source, 'Net Neutrality' has been used to mean one or more of the following:

• Definition #1: No internet service provider may restrict or in any way throttle traffic passing through their network based on the origin or destination of that traffic.
• • Example: AT&T would not be allowed to throttle traffic between my home PC and YouTube, even if I stream way too many videos. 
  • Example: EarthLink would not be allowed to give preference to traffic between my home PC and Google.com because they have a search revenue sharing agreement with Google.com (and not with Microsoft's Bing.com).
• Definition #2: No internet service provider may restrict or in any way throttle traffic passing through their network based on the type or class of traffic.
• • Example: Comcast would not be allowed to throttle the Skype-protocol traffic flowing over its network, regardless of where that traffic originated or terminated.
  • Example: PacBell would not be allowed to throttle the BitTorrent-protocol traffic flowing over its network as it transits between my home PC and some other network or host.

These both seem like very noble goals and intentions. There is always the straight forward libertarian argument against any such governmental intervention in the operations of a private business - but I am going to ignore that one for now (despite the fact that I mostly agree with it).

I then put myself in the shoes of an ISP owner and operator, and think about scenarios such as:

"If one of my user/customers was using such large amounts of bandwidth to download fully legal BitTorrent files (Linux CD images, for instance) that the experience of my other customers was negatively affected, would I be allowed to throttle the traffic of that one excessive user?"

"If I were approached by Hulu.com with the following offer: Please give preferential treatment to traffic you transfer to/from our website so that our users can watch movies in high-def without interruptions. In exchange for this preferential traffic handling, we will give you $$$ per month. Would I be legally permitted to sign such a contract?"

Complicating issues like this lead me to believe that there will be no fair or just rule by which to judge the legality of scenarios like these. And they only get more complicated - especially in the case of cellular networks that are severely bandwidth limited - the more you ask.

In the end, I fear we're getting our FCC into a black hole of unintended consequences that will be very hard to escape from.

Camera Lens Calculators are back in action!

A long, long time ago I had written two on-line calculators to help photographers answer the following questions:

1. How far away from my photographic subject can I be and still fill up the frame of the photo with that subject?
   
   This question gets at how large a focal length your lens needs to be in order to photograph a distant object without it appearing the size of a pin-prick in the resulting image. If you find yourself wondering whether you need that 300mm lens in order to capture a water buffalo at 500 meters, this calculator will be very useful to you.
   
2. When doing macro photography, how much of my camera sensor area will be covered by the subject at a given distance?
   
   This is for photographers working on extreme close-ups who want to fill the entire area of the camera's image sensor with the subject of their photograph (a flower, an insect, etc.). This calculation will tell you whether or not you have to have a 'true macro' lens (one that has a macro ratio of 1:1) in order to pull it off.

The calculators are available here. Enjoy!

PS This would not have been possible (or at least as easy as it was) were it not for the Internet Archives. The old version of my calculator page had been lost when I migrated to TypePad as my new weblog platform of choice, but luckily a snapshot of my website from April of 2005 was available, allowing me to pull the original formulas out of the digital dust bin.