1. Use pdftk to split the file in even and odd pages seperately:

pdftk in.pdf cat 1-endeven output out.even.pdf
pdftk in.pdf cat 1-endodd output out.odd.pdf

2. Now would be the time to apply some pdfnup trimming magic to the two new files.

3. Use pdftk to burst these two files into single pages:

pdftk out.odd.pdf burst output %04d_A.pdf
pdftk out.even.pdf burst output %04d_B.pdf

4. Use pdftk to merge the pages back into one file, e.g.:

pdftk *.pdf cat output out.pdf

The important point here lies in step 3 when appending A or B to the odd and even page file names, because this allows glob sorting the pages like 0001_A.pdf 0001_B.pdf 0002_A.pdf 0002_B.pdf and so on.  I can’t believe I started to write a script before I realized how to solve this the simple way…

SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", ATTR{speed}="220", ATTR{sensitivity}="190"

Scrolling
I also like to scroll with the help of the middle button. For this Fedora 13 now uses user config files for X like /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-thinkpad.conf reading e.g.:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier      "Trackpoint Wheel Emulation"
    MatchProduct    "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint|DualPoint Stick|Synaptics Inc. Composite TouchPad / TrackPoint"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    Option	    "EmulateWheel"       "true"
    Option	    "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
    Option	    "Emulate3Buttons"    "false"
    Option	    "XAxisMapping"       "6 7"
    Option	    "YAxisMapping"       "4 5"
EndSection

Concept You’ll want to compress the video & audio streams and wrap them in a flexible container, which should be capable of holding additional information like chapter markers and titles, audio subtitles, cover images, and archive information tags. For now, my choice is to encode the video with the H.264/AVC codec and use AAC for audio. Ideally, I would like to add subtitles as text in SubRip’s srt-Format. All this gets wrapped up in a Matroska stream container, which holds the meta information as well.

Backup So you got a DVD with some family videos from your last birthday and you want to back up the contents on your hard drive? First thing you do, is to copy everything as is — which may take a lot of disk space (up to 8 GB). I had good results with this simple tool:

dvdcpy -s skip -m -o My_Birthday /dev/sr0

After some time, you’ll find the DVD directory structure copied in your present working directory. With Fedora this handy gem comes in the ogmrip package.

Compression Next comes the crucial part: compressing the raw data into something usable.  After trying different options, I now rely on HandBrake for this, which in turn builds on the x264 library. Handbrake saves the streams directly into a Matroska container, allows editing chapter titles and adding extra subtitles from external files.  It works very fast and comes with reasonable default options.  Usually I stick with the Regular/Normal preset, just kicking out superfluous tracks and downmixing the audio to AAC 128bit Stereo.   I let Handbrake figure out the video quality by setting the target size to 700 MB, which in most cases results in slightly degraded but more than watchable video quality around 1000 kbps.  As I’m only interested in SD video quality, I usually choose a 624px-width based resolution.  You might want to consult this detailed video conversion table.

Subtitles I would prefer to store subtitle data efficiently as text, i.e. using SubRip‘s srt format (while more advanced xml-based formats seem to lack acceptance). HandBrake does not mess with OCR (which is excusable), it extracts subtitles as bitmaps in VobSub format.  The following command from the handy MKVToolnix package extracts from the mkv container the bitmaps and sync information in two files (*.vob and *.idx):

mkvextract tracks My_Birthday.mkv 3:subtitles.vob

These subtitles need to be scanned and ocr’ed: the best way to do this is Avidemux. Simpy hit “Tools > OCR(VobSub -> SRT)” and follow the instructions – be prepared though to invest some time helping with character recognition.  Don’t forget to check the spelling in the resulting SRT file.

Re-Muxing Handbrake leaves us with a usable Matroska container, however we’d like to replace subtitles and add some additional data for archiving purposes: at least a cover image and descriptive tags. The MKVToolnix package mentioned above provides the excellent mkvmerge utility featuring a graphical interface. With mkvmerge we remove the VobSub tracks and add our new SRT file as a subtitle track. You might also want to attach a file cover.jpg to the container. It will show up as the container’s thumbnail preview in a recent file browser. Moreover, we’d like to add some descriptive tags as suggested by the Matroska specification. However, I haven’t yet been able to find any player support for this feature. Anyway, for the tag file, you may use this template. Then merge the xml file into the container with mkvmerge (under the “global” tab for global tags).

This is quite a useless endeavor, of course.  Since every fork from Git contains the whole change history, GNU-style ChangeLogs are pretty obsolete.  However, if you want to distribute your source files in a traditional tarball, you might want to add a ChangeLog file – and you might want it to look like the ones in the GNU coding standard.  This is where my shell script comes in, which I wrote yesterday while doing some serious procrastination:

#!/bin/sh
# Convert git log to GNU-style ChangeLog file.
# (C) Chris
if test -d ".git"; then
    git log --date-order --date=short | \
    sed -e '/^commit.*$/d' | \
    awk '/^Author/ {sub(/\\$/,""); getline t; print $0 t; next}; 1' | \
    sed -e 's/^Author: //g' | \
    sed -e 's/>Date:   \([0-9]*-[0-9]*-[0-9]*\)/>\t\1/g' | \
    sed -e 's/^\(.*\) \(\)\t\(.*\)/\3    \1    \2/g' > ChangeLog
    exit 0
else
    echo "No git repository present."
    exit 1
fi

This code goes conveniently in a Makefile template for Autotools, so you can create the ChangeLog on the fly, include it in the distribution tarball and have it unlinked afterwards. Again, there’s no need to have a ChangeLog lie around with Git.

Steve Jobs has essentially turned Apple into a global luxury electronics brand, much like Sony was in the 1980s.  This strategy may seem risky on first glance, since for creative elitists Apple products are more and more loosing their distinguishing appeal.  Using an Apple product is not so much saying “I’m better, I’m in” anymore, but rather “I can spend more money than you”. For Apple’s shareholders of course, this turn from underdog to market leader has very well paid out.

More remarkable are the side effects of this development.  As Jobs pointed out, Apple sees itself no longer as a cutting edge computer design house but as selling portable devices which function as internet outlets for all kinds of media stores. This means that, thanks to Apple, people don’t need to bother with a computer anymore when they want to enjoy the internet. To be sure, Apple always tried to build devices where the user could feel as without actually being a geek. Now that they are selling the iPad to the masses, we are looking at users whose everyday internet experience will mean consumption, not production.  Of course, the old powers, publishers, networks, labels will eventually embrace this concept, since it preserves a central role for the media, for the middle-man of communication.  Imagine a world where 90% of the people use their iPads to consume internet delivered media like they now use their TV sets to consume old media.  Since they are glued to their new sexy internet handsets, they won’t care about DRM or standards or whatever, they only want to read that article or watch that movie or see that picture, right now “that simple”.  What about learning the nuts and bolts of the internet, what about actually participating in a global, many-sided communication?  Forget it. The new iPad-style internet will belong to Rupert Murdoch and his media buddies. With the iPad Apple may reach the holy grail of internet monetization – with the web as collateral damage.

However Google is your least problem when surfing the web. Your ISP and your mail provider know everything about you by default. Any sys admin at any ISP can read every bit, and I mean bit, of your web traffic 24/7. In Germany, the ISPs are even required by law to record your connections and log them with your full IP address for months. And of course, they are to be given out to the authorities on request – that’s why they are to be collected in the first place. Mail providers could easily read all your mails, including the ones with the user logins and passwords. No matter what mail provider you use.

And what about Schmidt’s privacy statement?  Although people don’t seem to get it: everything you do online you do in a public place. And you always did, even before 1996.  So, as far as public places go: if you don’t want other people to see something, where you don’t have much chances to hide it, than you best don’t do it, at least not in a public place.  Which brings us to Ströker’s very misconception: the internet is not and never was a private place.  The moment you log on, you’re leaving your home and go out on (very crowded) street. There are of course tools which allow you to hide at least some things (everyone should use PGP in their private correspondence for that matter) – however, as long as some bits crawl some line it’s not that much different from walking on a public street.

Our real problem is not some alleged corporate conspiracy against privacy but political attempts to censor and govern the raw traffic at the heart of the consumer internet: the ISPs’ servers. If people want to give up their privacy to Google, that’s fine, or at least it’s their right to do so. But this agreement has only two parties: them and Google. There’s no place for governments in this. Of course, Google might decide to cooperate with law enforcement agencies against their customers. But again, this is nothing new, but something ISPs all over the world (have to) do on a daily basis. The real problem is not Google, but third party access to your web traffic on behalf of the public good. Consider the following analogy: if I decide to open all my private letters to some private corporation who promises me, say, lightning fast mailing service, then you need not like my decision, but it’s legitimate nevertheless. Actually, this is what happened when people started to use private telegraphy services in the 19th century.  It happened again when people bought internet access from private ISPs. It is a complete different matter, though, when some third party, requires a copy of every letter sent over the wire. Yet, this is not a problem of the contract in itself. It’s a problem of wrong government priorities.

1. using the abcde script to rip the cd, some customizations apply
2. using MusicBrainz through picard for tuning folder hierarchy and tags
3. using Amazon’s API to download the cover files

This might be a bit more work than other approaches, but I get kick-ass audio files, clean tags and file names. This is my ~/.abcde.conf:

DEVICE=/dev/sr0
OUTPUTTYPE=mp3:" -V2 --vbr-new -q0 --lowpass 19.7 -b96"
PADTRACKS=y
OUTPUTFORMAT='${ARTISTFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM} - ${TRACKFILE}'
EJECTCD=Y
mungefilename ()
{
echo "$@" | sed s,:,\ -,g | tr -d \'\"\?\[:cntrl:\]
}


Your device is probably named differently. The OUTPUTTYPE parameter sets the settings for lame. I chose a variable bitrate and basically cut off everything the ear can’t hear. The OUTPUTFORMAT parameter names and sorts the files into a iTunes-style hierarchy. I tweaked the mungefile() method to get Windows-style filenames, i.e. I want whitespace in my filenames.

I run abcde from a sandbox folder on my hard drive. It’s easy to put it in the background by starting it with screen. Having collected new music, I filter the whole stuff through picard to get top-notch MP3 tags. What picard can’t find I’ll add to the MusicBrainz database myself from the original CD.

As I use boxee to play and display my audio files on my media box, I want neat high-resolution cover images in each folder. I wrote a short python script to retrieve the covers from Amazon via their store API. Currently, I’m trying to add a GUI, which allows to scan whole music collections and provide missing or wrong images in batch mode. Once I’m done, I’m going to roll this into a Ubuntu package and distribute it.

This whole crusade against file-sharing is way more dangerous than it might seem. It is not only successful lobbying on behalf of the content industry. And it is not only about cutting off some cheap kids from their music supply. Old media, content industry and politics might find a common interest to change the nature of the internet forever. The old powers have reason to turn the internet into something like TV: a malleable means to distribute products and channel approved information.

The content industry used mass media to sell their products, politicians used them to control the masses – and the old media gained power and wealth from both ends. However, the internet changed the rules of the game because it allowed individual communication on a massive and global scale. Precisely its peer-to-peer nature established a public infrastructure which could not as easily be twisted and influenced as the old media in the TV age. In terms of peer-to-peer communication every client is equal – and every voice and opinion may be heard unfiltered. No need for mediation nor content salesmen, no easy access for politicians to the public opinion. In our new age people can exchange digital goods and analog ideas without direction and control of the establishment. This is why content industry, TV-age media and old-school politicians all have a very good reason to hate the internet in its present form. And this is what worries me most in the power struggle that lies ahead. Sure, private broadband connections will survive, we will still have packet-based protocols – but what if all people may use it for is buying TV streams from established outlets as everything else is effectively outlawed? Would you still call that “internet”?