Test

This is a test if Planet AEGEE works .....

A new website for AEGEE Wien: Preparation

As the current website of AEGEE Wien is quite outdated and hard to maintain (hand coded PHP, no user management etc.) it's time for a fresh start.

After seriously considering Drupal for a while, I decided to go with Wordpress instead. The main reason being that it can be administered by a non-tech savvy person. Second it has a lot of professional looking themes and is easily extensible (not to mention that there are already numerous AEGEE locals using it).

So as a first step I installed it on our server. Which was a snap, due to the excellent documentation!

As a next step I will analyse how people come to our site. A first assessment of newcomers at the Stammtisch indicates that SprachDUO is the biggest stream of new fresh members. A first glance at the Google searches that lead to us seems to support this. Here the top 5 searches:

1. 12 % aegee wien (2)


2. 10 % tandem wien (7)


3. 10 % aegee (3)


4. 9 % sprachduo wien (2)


5. 5 % aegee summer university

The first number is the percentage of searches, then comes the keywords used and the rank of our website in the search results.
Given this we really should focus on SprachDUO. It currently is very much totally dead from the admin's view - we don't have access to the database!
But more on that in the future.

My current plan is to have a decent replacement for the current site by May 1st. Given the numerous courses I've opted to take this semester (two which require quite some software engineering and programming) this might not be over realistic to achive. But I will strive to!

Encode a directory of WAVs to MP3

In order to encode a directory of WAV files to MP3 pop open a shell and type the following:

for i in *.wav; do lame "$i" "`basename "$i" .wav`".mp3; done

To set the bitarte (128 is absolutely ok, though audiophiles may want to use 192 kbit/s) add the following:

for i in *.wav; do lame -b 128 "$i" "`basename "$i" .wav`".mp3; done

Another useful option is

-m s/j/f/d/m

Choose between (s)tereo, (j)oint stereo, (f)orce jpint stereo, (d)ual channel and (m)ono. Useful if you have e.g. voice recordings and want to convert them to stereo.

Have a look at the man page for more.

Relevance of JavaSound and JMF and I'm on Google!

Working on the second assignment of the lecture ITM in which we process audio and video data with Java Sound and Java Media Framework (JMF), I was curious (as always) how relevant the technology is we're taught.

Taking a look at the official documentation's date wasn't very promising, stating that it said Last Updated October 24, 2001. Neither was the corresponding paragraph in Java ist auch eine Insel where the author linked to this 6 year old post.
So it seems Java Sound is tremendously outdated. And we're learning how to use it? Great ...

Regarding JMF, isn't any better either: although it's pretty much up-to-date for itself (being maintained, that is to say) it's codec support is more than an insult to developers trying to accomplish anything useful, not to mention being cross-platform (see supported formats list).
I admit, building a cross-platform multimedia framework is a challenging and one might even say indomitable task, but why not use existing frameworks like GStreamer or DirectShow etc.?

From the developer's perspective there are some alternatives one should consider, including:

• QuickTime for Java (though Windows and Mac only)


• Java Bindings for VLC (no docs!)


• GStreamer for Java


• jffmpeg

I'm on Google

Having started an article about Java Sound in my high school years I was surprised to find this (not at all relevant information containing) article being 11th on the Google search results.
Yay!

Kleines Helferlein

Hier ein kleines helferlein, dass beim Erstellen von Symlinks hilft.

Benützung:
Zuerst das Skript in das src-Verzeichnis kopieren.

Dann ausführbar machen mit: chmod o+x mks.sh

Und dann so benutzen: bash mks.sh {Endung für die Symlinks erstellt werden soll}

Für php also: bash mks.sh php

Für XML: bash mks.sh xml

Viel Spass und gute Nacht

BTW: Warum nur kennt PHP 5 kein Class-Scope, sodass man immer $this-> schreiben muss? *kopfschüttel*

Nach der Prüfung ist vor der Prüfung

Der Denker - Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (København)

Heute war bekannterweise Prüfung. Mal schauen was es wird. Ursprünglich wollte ich mich ja wieder abmelden, da ich keine Zeit für eine vernünftige Vorbereitung hatte. Dennoch entschied ich mich kurzfristig dagegen, weil besser werden kann (und werde) ich im März sicher ;-).

Zu erledigen:

• Skript einmal komplett durcharbeiten (+ Zusatzquellen aus den Folien sichten)


• Die häufigsten Fragen aus den Test identifizieren und diese üben (momentan sind das IMHO XPath, XSLT, Schema, WSDL, DTD, Arch.: Patterns, Prinzipien (Kohäsion/Kupplung), Strukturen)


• Alte Tests als Probe für's geübte heranziehen.

Mal schaun', zu welchem grad' ich meine Vorsätze durchziehen werde. Interessant sind die behandelten gebiete auf jeden Fall.

P.S.: Please vote for WordPerfect reveal codes function in OO.o!

WSDL: Fixed

Wie Herr Prof. Derntl im Kommentar angemerkt hat, zeigt der Endpoint ins Nirvana. Das ist nun behoben und alles sollte funktionieren.