3gp files are video files used by many mobile phones. It is notoriously difficult to get this to work on Linux, especially completely "free" Linuxes, due to restrictions on the amr format used for the sound.

This guide is for Ubuntu 9.04, may work on other versions. There may be extraneous steps here below.

1. Add medibuntu to your list of repositories. Follow the guide here.

2. Start Synaptic. Reload the sources on Synaptic

3. Quit synaptic

4. Rebuild the text index of Synaptic so that it can find the new packages (cred goes here):

sudo update-apt-xapian-index

5. Start synaptic again

6. Uninstall mplayer if it is already installed

7. Install w32 codecs

8. Install the following codecs:

(some of these might be overkill, for example the dev libs, but at this step I wasn't sure if any later step would entail compilation))

9. Install mplayer again

10. install smplayer (a GUI front end to mplayer)

11. Navigate to your 3gp file in Gnome, right click it and select to Open it with SMPlayer

12. Now there should be sound

Summary: Use

sudo xrandr --output VGA --pos 0x0

If your projector is called VGA. Read on for more detailed info

How to clone your screen with a projector, when they have different  resolutions

I have a Dell vostro 1015  laptop with a resolution of 1366x768 pixels, and an Epson Emp-tw420 projector with a resolution of 1280x720 pixels. I run Ubuntu 9.04. Problem is when I hold a presentation I want to clone the screen of the laptop to the projector, and a negotiation starts and I end up with a measly 1024x768 on both screens. This is the highest resolution that both screens support. It is a waste of pixels especially on the projector's side.

The solution is to tell Ubuntu to have both screens active side by side (or one above the other), and set the maximum resolution of each and then use the xrandr utility to set both screen to start at the the top left (0x0).

If you type xrandr in a terminal you will get information on both screens and one will have an offset, expressed something like:

VGA connected 1280x720+1366x0

In this case VGA is the name it has given to my projector, 1280x720 is the resolution and 1366x0 is the offset of the screen. the trick is to move the offset to 0x0 so that the screens show the same thing. You do this if your projector is called VGA with:

sudo xrandr --output VGA --pos 0x0

So now I have the same output on both screens at full resolution. The projector does not show the rightmost 86 pixels and the lowermost 48 pixels of the laptop's screen. But that is quite OK as long as I do not need to run in 1024x768.

You could probably achieve this in xorg. conf but the above command is convenient as is. I had to manually set the aspect ratio to wide on the Epson projector afterwards.

It has x-height of 3 pixels, it is italic, inspired by old masters and most important – made by hand. Y

Läs mer: First subpixel typeface, ever | Typophile

Man måste ha konto för att redigera så jag har inte kollat hur man wikiredigerar en karta.

Här en länk till editors man kan använda:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editing

OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you.

En otrevlig sak med lysrörslampor är att de innehåller kvicksilver, som sprids som ånga om man har sönder en. Halterna i luften efter en sådan olycka kan väl överstiga gränsvärdet för vad som anses hälsosamt. Det kan bli värre om man dammsuger eftersom man då rör upp det kvicksilver som fallit till marken i luften. Halterna av kvicksilver är annars högst på golvet och är då extra farligt för krypande eller liggande barn. En yta som ser ren ut kan fortfarande ha kvicksilver på sig. Mattor kan behöva slängas.

Om man lägger resterna av lampan i dubbla plastpåsar så kommer ångorna ut ändå; en glasburk med metallock och gummipackning fungerar dock. Se länk nedan till undersökningen som gjorts av den amerikanska staten Maines miljöförvaltning.

Mitt råd: Gå över på LED-lampor så snart som möjligt. Ja och det vore bra om EU tog bort sitt förbud på glödlampor. Höj energipriser om energi ska sparas, specificera inte hur människor ska ordna sina liv!

Cleaning up a broken CFL by vacuuming up the smaller debris particles in an un-vented room can elevate mercury concentrations over the MAAG in the room and it can linger at these levels for hours. Vacuuming tends to mix the air within the room such that the one foot and five foot heights are similar immediately after vacuuming. A vacuum can become contaminated by mercury such that it cannot be easily decontaminated. Vacuuming a carpet where a lamp has broken and been visibly cleaned up, even weeks after the cleanup, can elevate the mercury readings over the MAAG in an un-vented room.

"H. glaciei isn't a pathogen and is not harmful to humans", Dr Loveland-Curtze added, "but it can pass through a 0.2 micron filter, which is the filter pore size commonly used in sterilization of fluids in laboratories and hospitals. If there are other ultra-small bacteria that are pathogens, then they could be present in solutions presumed to be sterile. In a clear solution very tiny cells might grow but not create the density sufficient to make the solution cloudy".

Läs mer: A tiny frozen microbe may hold clues to extraterrestrial life | Eureka! Science News

Detta har jag bloggat om tidigare, men nu så finns det också en studie som på ett pedagogiskt sätt visar bindningsförmågan:

Men än så länge binder viruset inte lika starkt till celler i lungorna som de som finns i näsan och svalget. Det konstaterade forskarna genom att studera vilka av 86 olika receptorer, som placerats i en matris på en glasskiva, som olika influensavirus fäste vid. När viruset fäster lyser punkter med receptorn upp. På så sätt går det att få bilder av vilka receptorer respektive virus kan docka till.

Läs mer: Svininfluensan attackerar lungorna - Ny Teknik

Styrplattorna (touch pads) från Synaptics har tydligen en inneboende förmåga att detektera mer än ett finger på styrplattan. Man behöver bara släppa lös den inneboende förmågan. Jag följde denna guide: ubuntu snippets: Multi touch for any,all synaptics touchpad

och sedan lade jag också till följande i xorg.conf:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Configured Mouse"
    Driver "synaptics"
    Option "SHMConfig" "true"
EndSection

och sedan så hade jag tvåfingersrullning! I guiden ovan så står det att man kan kolla att styrplattan kan detektera flera fingrar med ett program. Min gjorde inte det enligt testet. Men det funkar ju uppenbarligen i alla fall.

Multi-touch became trendy after iphone came up with it. We are seeing many new laptops with multi-touch. At hardware level, there is nothing special that you need, to make multi-touch work. You can also do two-finger scroll and two-finger tap to right/middle click. Also, three-finger tap, but, for me it is very hard to press three fingers at the same time(1 out of 10).

Nudler's team found that many antibiotics kill bacteria through the production of harmful charged particles known as reactive oxygen species, otherwise called oxidative stress. "Antibiotics cause bacteria to produce a lot of reactive oxygen species. Those damage DNA, and bacteria cannot survive. They eventually die," says Nudler. "We found nitric oxide can protect bacteria against oxidative stress." He says bacteria produce nitric oxide to resist antibiotics. The defence mechanism appears to apply broadly to many different types of antibiotics.

Läs mer: NO enzymes help bacteria resist antibiotics › News in Science (ABC Science)

I am opposed to mandatory vaccination, even though I believe vaccination is an important public health measure that will save millions of lives. But there isn't enough vaccine for everyone in the world, so if people in the US don't want it, then any unused stock (keeping a small reserve) should be released by a date certain (say January 15 for the sake of argument) and given to others. I believe this will doom many Americans to severe sickness and some to a fatal illness, but the compensation is that many others, children and adults, in poorer parts of the world will be saved.

Läs mer: Swine flu vaccines, adjuvants, equity, safety: more discussion : Effect Measure

Ny Teknik skriver om ett kardborreband som kan hålla 35 ton, och det är återanvändbart. Apropå det där med att återanvända det, i kommentarsfältet:

Kan bli jobbigt att återanvända om det krävs 35ton dragkraft föratt få upp det igen;)

Läs mer: Kardborreband av stål tål 35 ton - Ny Teknik

Efter att ha gått igenom 1800 donatorers antikroppar mot HIV har man hittat en man som har två antikroppar som var för sig massivt överträffar alla andra donatorers antikroppar. Dessa två superantikroppar binder på ett sätt som man inte inriktat sig på tidigare, en trippelupprepning på viruset, en trimer.

Man hoppas att viruset inte kan förändra denna del så enkelt.

They found that about 10 per cent of the donors made so-called "broadly-neutralising antibodies" (bNAbs) that recognise multiple strains of HIV. Eventually the researchers whittled these down to two extremely potent antibodies – both from the same African donor – that massively outperformed the others.

One, codenamed PG9, neutralised 127 of 162 HIV strains and the other, codenamed PG16, neutralised 119.

Summary

The Dell Vostro 1015 is a capable machine with

• a good screen
• good battery life (according to Dell, not according to me, if you get the small battery)
  
• good connectivity
  
• a good webcam
•  a good price,

... but is somewhat let down by its substandard keyboard and touchpad.

Keyboard and touchpad +

The keyboard is the part of the 1015 that I least agree with so far. It flexes in the middle a bit, mushy in feel, but the tops of the keys are spaced ok with a gap in between them. The Pg Up and Pg Down keys are awkwardly placed; they are in a column with Home above and End below them. I would have preferred them to be positioned left and right of the up arrow key instead. Keys are a bit unresponsive and some key presses of mine are not recorded as I type if I type with a light touch. No back lighting of the keys.

The touchpad is too small and has a scroll function along the right and bottom edges that I don't agree with. This scroll functionality can be shut off in the OS, but I would have preferred the scroll strips to be separated from the touch pad, and in the best of worlds, I would like to do apple style finger combinations on the touch pad.

Update: I have just enabled software in Ubuntu Linux on the machine, that allows multi touch with two finger scrolling, yay!.

Connectivity

• Bluetooth
• 4 USB ports
• VGA
• Wireless
• Gbit Ethernet
• 56K modem
• IEE1394 (Firewire)
• ExpressCard slot

...are all Included but no HDMI, and the wireless does not handle 802.11n draft. There is also a built in web cam with a generous 2mpix resolution, and it gives sharp video. 4 star rating due to inclusion of Firewire and Bluetooth on such a cheap laptop and a decent resolution on the web cam.

Ports

Left hand side ports: VGA (outside of picture), Ethernet and two of the USB ports. The ExpressCard port cover has the blue LEDs for power, networking. Bluetooth and hard disk activity shining through it from the front. BTW manufacturers, go back to red LEDs, they are much less intrusive in the dark

There are no connectors on the back side. Instead they are on the left, right and front edges which I believe is par for the course nowadays. Placing them along both sides means you get locked in by cables while sitting.  As an example the power cord is on the right hand side and the Ethernet cord on the left hand side.  So when you stand up, lifting the laptop out of your lap, you're trapped. If the VGA port on the left hand side traded places with the power connector's, 90% of the time you could have all cables on the left hand side only. The sound connectors are in the front which means when connected, the cable connectors poke into your belly.

Screen +

The only reliable high contrast screen laptop manufacturers are Apple and Sony, but Dell often has very good brightness and contrast on their laptops (see notebookcheck.net). The screen of the 1015 is bright, but I suspect the contrast is just OK. The vertical viewing angle is narrow. Contrast trick: tilting the screen slightly away seems at least subjectively to increase contrast and there is enough brightness anyway. The screen is not blank but instead has a matte surface, so no glare from light sources behind you. The screen is fairly low resolution at 1280x800 1366x768. The store where I bought it lists the resolution as 1280x800 on their site, but the xrandr program on my machine reports it to be 1366x768 pixels. This gives it a 16:9 aspect ratio, which is the HDTV aspect ratio.

Battery life ?
According to Dell it has a good battery life, but on Ubuntu Linux I get about 90 minutes which is not so good. That is with the 4 cell battery and with full backlighting and WiFi and Bluetooth switched on, no DVD activity. Linux is known to be much worse at power consumption so possibly the battery life would be better under Windows, something I have not tried. The Linux program dmidecode reports the battery to have a  22Wh capacity which is kind of on the low side for a battery in a laptop. Dell Sweden does not carry the 1015 at all, Dell UK carries it but not the batteries, but on the Dell US site one can see that the 6 cell battery at 48Wh, has more than double the capacity of the 4 cell. Some versions odf the 1015 ship with a 6 cell battery.

Verdict

It is cheap, especially with a low end processor like the Celeron-equipped one that I bought. If you tolerate the keyboard and touchpad it is a good buy.

I got mine pre-built from a third party since I needed it urgently and there was a significant difference in price in that store up to the C2D. Had I had the time to order one custom built directly from Dell it would have been with a C2D and bigger battery. Actually after looking at the Swedish Dell store I see that they do not carry the 1015. How odd. Dell UK seems to carry it and judging from the hits on this article my guess it is also available in Germany, Poland and India (but I haven't checked).

Had I gone with the more expensive pre-built C2D I probably would have been irritated with the mushy keyboard for the price so I made the right call. Again for the price the screen is quite good. I have had it a week now, and so far it delivers for the price. The Celeron model I got was as noted pre-built and has the small 4-cell battery and I have not had time to check how long the battery lasts on Windows (I am chiefly running Linux on it which may shorten battery life compared to Windows).

My Toshiba L30-149 just presented garbage on screen after an upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10. It persisted in doing so when I continued the upgrade to 9.04. I used the below guide. The proprietary fglrx driver was replaced and after that I stopped getting garbage on screen and instead got a login screen.

This guide will show you how to use the Free, Open Source driver for many ATI graphics cards called "radeon" or "ati". It will provide 2D and 3D acceleration in your video hardware. This driver is not as fast as the closed-source, proprietary "fglrx" driver from AMD/ATI Inc. for some cards, but has better dual-head support, and supports some older chipsets that fglrx does not.

Läs mer: The open source ATI driver (xserver-xorg-video-ati) - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Webworks and Betahaus NGO are moving together to our new Plonista-friendly headquarters at Skeppsbron, Stockholm, Sweden.

 Photo by webbfredag, captions added

We will now have more space. The office right now consists of collapsible conference tables and chairs but soon there will be sofas, carpets and chandeliers as well we hope (and the odd desk).

Stockholm-residing plonistas Raphael Ritz and Israel Saeta Perez met up with us (me, Robin Harms and Martin Lundwall) and helped us evaluate the offices with regards to use it as a space for Plone talk, beer and pizzas. The evaluation was favorable :-)

Environment: A washing machine uses thousands of nylon beads, and just a cup of water, to provide a greener way to do the laundry

Läs mer: Monitor: Washing without water | The Economist

Dynamically linked libraries (.so under Unix, .dll on Microsoft) code cannot use static addresses internally because the code may appear in different places in memory in different situations. DNA has this too, where it is called 'transposing code':

Läs mer: DNA seen through the eyes of a coder

Ett virus som H1N1 gör ett skrivfel per tio tusen baspar, vilket innebär i snitt att varje nya kopia av viruset har en mutation. Om man då tänker på de miljoner kopior som görs, så inser man att sannolikheten att något individuellt virus får en farligare mutation är hög.

Dessutom är H1N1s DNA delat i sex delar i stället för att hänga ihop i en lång tråd. Det innebär att om en cell infekteras av flera olika virus kan dessa rekombinera sina delar med varandra, och det är för övrigt så som H1N1 förmodligen skapats, med DNA-fragment från virus som gått på människa, fågel respektive gris.

It turns out that Influenza packs inside its virus capsule a protein complex (RNA-dependent RNA polymerase) that is customized for its style of RNA copying. Significantly, it omits the error checking protein. The result is that there is about one error made in copying every 10,000 base pairs. How long is the Influenza genome? About 13,000 base pairs. Thus, on average, every copy of an Influenza virus has one random mutation in it.

This is part of the reason why the novel H1N1 is called a “triple-reassortant” virus: through either a series of dual-infections, or perhaps a single calamitous infection of multiple flu varieties, the novel H1N1 acquired a mix of RNA snippets that has bestowed upon it high transmission rates along with no innate human immunity to the virus, i.e., the perfect storm for a pandemic.

Läs mer: On Influenza A (H1N1) « bunnie's blog

I nya Zeeland ser det ut så här:

Man kan notera att spädbarnen ligger illa till, och att om man är gammal och får viruset så är det inte så bra. Observera också att det är lika stor risk att bli smittad om man är i 50-59 som i 40-49. Det "skydd" som kickar in när man blir äldre verkar komma efter 59, och man tror ju att det är något som hände runt 1957 som gav immunitet, men här skulle man jukunna tro att det är 1949

Eurosurveillance - View Article

I Tyskland så här:

Väldigt få fall bland spädbarn.

A Gilsdorf ()¹, G Poggensee¹, on behalf of the working group pandemic influenza A(H1N1)v^1,2
Läs mer: Eurosurveillance - View Article

Det är mycket högre andel barn i Nya Zeeland. Kanske någon skillnad i metodik? Smittovägar?

Nya Zeeland är ett av de hårdast drabbade länderna och är mitt i isn vanliga influensasäsong. Ändå börjar svininfluensan klinga av, och ingen vet riktigt varför.

Den europeiska medicinska tidskriften Eurosurveillance är en tidskrift som finns öppet tillgänglig på nätet:

All surveillance systems currently show a consistent decline in pandemic disease rates in all areas of New Zealand. This decline cannot be fully explained. New Zealand is still in the middle of its traditional influenza season, the A (H1N1)v virus appears relatively infectious, and we estimate that so far only about 11% of the population have been infected by this novel agent. Similar patterns of a relatively short epidemic have also be reported in other countries in the southern hemisphere, notably Australia