XBMC and Natty
I also upgraded Ubuntu on our media PC. After the upgrade XBMC started to act strangely. When I tried to move up or down in the menu, it jumped two for each keypress. During the playback, sometimes the video froze for a fraction of the second, while the sound was continuing normally, then the video fast forwarded and caught up with the audio. The third issue was that the OSD wasn’t visible. It appeared for a quick moment, but then it disappeared. It was still there, but it wasn’t visible.
Read MoreFixing wireless after Ubuntu upgrade
Yesterday we upgraded the Eee PC 1000H from Ubuntu 10.10 to 11.04. Today it was unable to connect to the wireless network. After searching a little bit on the internet, I found the reason. There is a Ralink wireless card in the netbook:
01:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT2860
OpenStreetMap
Not long ago I was talking to a friend, and I mentioned OpenStreetMap. I was surprised to learn that he had never heard of it before.
OpenStreetMap is a freely available online map, similar to Bing maps or Google maps. The big difference is that OpenStreetMap is editable. Just like Wikipedia, it is edited by the online community. Everybody can upload GPS tracks, define roads, mark buildings, and so on. Even if you don’t have a GPS, you can help, for example by entering street names.
Read MoreThe story of the kangaroo
In the past few weeks I’ve been posting and showing people various screenshots about my latest flights. After seeing these pictures many people asked one of these two questions: Did you fly in Australia? What is the story with the kangaroo?
Since I saw a first person flying game on a Commodore Plus4 for the first time, I have always been interested in flight simulation. I have used Microsoft Flight Simulator 95, 98, 2000, 2002 and most recently 2004. I have also joined IVAO, a flight simulation network, where people can fly and even control online.
I’m a member of the Irish Division, because I live in Ireland, although I could also be a member of the Hungarian Division. I usually fly the ATR 72-500, but I’m also practicing with the Airbus A320.
Recently the Irish Division announced the IFR Tour 2010. Usually people associate instrumental flight with larger aircraft, but the twist in the IFR Tour that only smaller aircraft is allowed. On the Tour logo a Cessna 404 Titan is displayed, in the livery of the now defunct IONA Airways. Thus I decided to use this type.
Flight Simulator 2004 comes with 20-25 built-in aircraft. If someone wants to use different types or better quality models, there are hundreds available as add-ons. There are payware and freeware models as well. The Cessna 404 Titan is not included by default, but there are some freely available models. For these models there are various paintings, but the IONA livery is not included. I have checked the available liveries, and I liked the one with the kangaroo (Quantas Southern) best. So I started to use that one. That’s why I have the kangaroo on all my recent screenshots.
Read MoreHTML5 video
There is a nice article about HTML5 video: http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html
Read MoreXMBC, Lucid and PulseAudio
After I have upgraded our media PC to Ubuntu 10.4 (Lucid Lynx) audio stopped working in XBMC. Upgrading to the latest XBMC ubuntu packages from PPA didn’t help. After some experimenting, I have figured out that pulseaudio had to be started. I have the XBMC session file (/usr/share/xsessions/XBMC.desktop), and it turned out that it simply starts xbmc-standalone, which in turn starts pulse-session. But only if it exists. On Lucid it does not.
Fortunately we can use pulseaudio –start instead. So I just modified the startup script and now it works fine.
For the records /usr/bin/xbmc-standalone before:
#!/bin/sh
if which pulse-session; then
pulse-session xbmc --standalone "$@"
else
xbmc --standalone "$@"
fi
And after:
if which pulseaudio; then
pulseaudio --start
fi
xbmc --standalone "$@"
Links 2010-05-06
Reading material 
- http://blog.drinsama.de/erich/en/20100504-facebook-tracking-via-like.html [en]
- http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline [en]
- http://index.hu/tudomany/2010/05/06/meghataroztak_a_kvarkok_tomeget/ [hu]
- http://fedor.blog.hu/2010/05/06/a_lo_tulso_oldala_1 [hu]
- http://www.portfolio.hu/cikkek.tdp?h=1&k=3&i=132686 [hu]
Links 2010-04-30
Pages with interesting stuff:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/04/whats-wrong-with-css.html [en]
http://penzcentrum.hu/cikk/1023333/1/az_avatar_kellemetlen_sikere [hu]
http://gazz.blog.hu/2010/04/29/csalok_sunnyogok_es_fejostehenek_az_unioban [hu]
Fine tuning FS
During the flight I mentioned in my last entry, I realised that I had forgotten to install and setup some stuff. So I installed them today. These were:
- Service Pack 3 for the Flight 1 ATR 72
- Latest navitational database for the ATR 72, available from navigraph.com
I also had to set up my microphone. It wasn’t easy. Windows 7 detects two microphones for some reason. I had to disable the first one in the list. Furthermore I had to increase the volume to 100% and boost to +20.0 dB (66%). We tested the microphone with a fellow pilot so now it should be ok. 
By the way, it was the same pilot as yesterday, let’s call him BCY007 Lotfi
The engines were too loud, so I changed the sound settings as well. First in the ATR 72 configurator. Ambient sounds are set to 50%, everything else is set to 90%. Unfortunately, I cannot hear some less important sounds using these settings, but I cannot set the ambient sounds higher to 50%, otherwise I get a terrible noise in the cockpit.
I have also changed the Flight Simulator sound settings as follows: 2, 30, 20, 10, 80, 80. As you see I have set the engines to very low. Now it’s fine. I can still hear them so I notice how the engines react on changing the throttle.
Finally I did a short flight from EIDW (Dublin) to EINN (Shannon), and everything went fine.
Read MoreFokker F50 and DAAG sceenery
Yesterday I have installed a Fokker F50 for FS2004. It was made by DreamWings Design, and it contains a CityJet livery by Mathieu Vos. It is available from flightsim.com: http://www.flightsim.com/kdl.php?fid=139789
Installation is straightforward, just copy the extracted directory in the Aircraft directory of FS2004. There is also a panel for the F50 from the Fokker Panel Project, but I haven’t installed it yet.
Today I did a flight with a fellow pilot from CityJet VA from DTTA (Tunis) to DAAG (Algiers). There is a very nice sceenery available for DAAG that I installed before the flight. Just unrar to Addon Sceeneries, add as usually, and it works. Available from http://riadg.free.fr/
As the DAAG sceenery is in a rar file, I had to install winrar as well. However, I set it to be the default application for rar files only. Windows 7 can handle zip files, so I’m glad I don’t have to use winzip. And I will use winrar only when really necessary.
Read MoreIVAO
