Out of Sync Audio with .MOV Files on a Windows PC

I was editing a video using Windows Live Movie Maker on my Windows 7 PC today. I'd recorded an introductory clip using the built-in camera on my MacBook Pro, saved as a QuickTime .mov file. For some reason when viewing the file on the PC, the audio was out of sync with the video when viewed in WLMM.

A workaround was to convert the .mov file to .mp4 format using Handbrake. WLMM was then able to import the file with the audio in sync and I was able to finish editing the video.

(Yes, I'm primarly a Mac user but I like the user interface in WLMM better than iMovie. So, when I edit videos for my YouTube channel, I gravitate towards the PC. I need to find a better video editor for the Mac.)

Reenabling Back with the Backspace Key in Chrome

Chrome on my MacBook Pro was automatically updated this morning, after which I noticed that the backspace key no longer worked to go back a page. Apparently this was implemented a little while ago but didn't manifest itself on my machine until today. This matches the default behavior on Linux, which I detest, since I use backspace to return to a previous page constantly.

After some searching, I discovered that Google made the change to prevent people from accidentally deleting data in a form. Initially, there was no way to reenable the backspace key.

However, enough people bitched about the change to get Google to create an extension to restore the previous behaving. You can get it here.

A plea to developers: Please do not change the behavior of your program's user interface without giving the end user a choice.

Apple Discontinuing Support for QuickTime for Windows

Windows users should be aware of is the fact that Apple is discontinuing development of QuickTime for Windows, so it's time to uninstall it. There are known vulnerabilities that will not be patched. 

QuickTime .MOV files can be played in iTunes or VLC.

Link.

MacBook Pro SSD Upgrade

This morning I drove down to MicroCenter and bought a Crucial MX100 256 GB SSD (Amazon link), which I used to upgrade my mid-2009 MacBook Pro. The machine has 8 GB of RAM and a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, so it was still useful, although before I replaced it with my current work MBP was starting to feel a bit pokey. My goal with the SSD was to improve performance, and especially battery life, for use with my ham radios while camping.

The SSD is smaller than the original Hitatchi disk (256 GB vs. 320 GB) but I don't plan on keeping multimedia files on the machine, so it should have enough space. While at MicroCenter I added a $5 USB 2.0 external enclosure to my cart, into which I put the old disk. I can bring it along for extra storage if need be.

The SSD went in easily and I did a clean install of OS 10.6 Snow Leopard onto it from a disc. I then had to update Snow Leopard to get the App Store, so I could then download and install OS 10.9.4 Mavericks. This all took a couple hours. After getting the OS configured like I wanted I installed the apps I need:

• CHIRP
• Fldigi
• USB drivers for my Baofeng programming cable and for my Icom 7200's USB interface
• LibreOffice
• MS Office for Mac 2011
• TextWrangler
• Skype
• Chrome and Firefox
• Evernote
• StatusClock (to display UTC time in my toolbar)
• Various other utilities

The laptop is noticeably faster in both boot time and how quickly applications open. Excel 2011 in particular opens much more quickly.

Next weekend I'll be taking the MBP into the field, so I tested that CHIRP works with my Baofeng UV5RA and that Fldigi can send and receive PSK31 when connected to my Icom 7200.

As an aside, OWC sells a larger capacity battery to fit this old MacBook Pro. If I find myself getting significant use out of the machine I may invest in one.

I should note that I had considered upgrading the hard disk in my MSI Wind U100 netbook instead. It's certainly handier to pack into the field for use with ham radio ops, but I chose to upgrade the Mac because (a) it's way faster, and (b) the larger keyboard and screen and much easier to use.

Performance and battery life are already noticeably better with the SSD. If you have a laptop that's a few years old changing out the old spinning disk for an SSD is a quick way to give it a new lease on life.

Solar Walk for iOS

Yesterday when I had iTunes open I ran across the iOs app Solar Walk by ViTO Technology as a recommendation. It looked neat and was on sale for only $0.99, so I grabbed it. I'm glad I did.

Solar Walk is a 3D virtual tour of the solar system. The graphics are simply gorgeous, the user interface is very intuitive, and it presents a lot of information in an easy to digest format. I showed my 9 year old daughter the app and she almost immediately grabbed my iPad away from me and started playing with it. She has the UI down pat in a couple of minutes and had I not told her to shut it off around 9:00 PM, she probably would have been up until midnight playing with it. I've never seen her so excited about a computer program or website.

Solar Walk will run on iPhones and iPod Touches, not just iPads, so we'll be getting it for the girls' iPods.

ViTO Technology has a couple of other interesting looking iOS apps, such as Star Walk and Geo Walk, which I'll check out as well.

If any reader knows of a comparable application that will run on Android tablets, please post a link in the comments.

Linux Mint 13 XFCE Edition

Last week in a fit of geekiness, I setup my PC at home to dual boot Linux Mint 13 XFCE Edition alongside Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. Although I've had various Linux distros running inside VirtualBox VMs, I wanted to run Linux natively.

I selected Mint since based on prior experiments, it's easy to install and provides a good selection of apps. I specifically chose the XFCE version because I like it as a desktop environment, being stable and light on resources. (The PC has a Core i5 and 8 gigs of RAM, so it's got plenty of horsepower, but I prefer simpler desktops anyway.) Ubuntu is most commonly suggested when Linux noobs are looking at potential distros to try, but IMO its current desktop is horrid. Unity is an ugly POS better suited to tablets than PCs, and I didn't want to mess with changing it. There are official variants of Ubuntu with other desktops (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.) but I wound up with Mint.

Overall the install went smoothly and everything works, after a little tweaking to fix a problem streaming media. Specifically, the audio would frequently stutter when I streamed YouTube video -- something I do a lot. After doing some googling, I discovered that it's due to a bug in how PulseAudio interacts with some drivers, including the one for my RealTek sound card. I found the fix here.

The fix requires a slight config chance in the file /etc/pulse/default.pa. As root or using the sudo command, open the file in a text editor.

Then, find the line which reads:

load-module module-udev-detect

and modify it to read like this:

load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0

Save and quit the file. You then need to restart the pulseaudio service. You can do this either via a reboot or finding the process via ps ax | grep pulseaudio, killing it, then restarting it.

This was kind of annoying. The sound card I'm using is built into my PC's Intel motherboard, so it is a very common sound card and this sort of thing should be found before software is released.

Aside from the sound issue I haven't run into any other problems, and Linux Mint 13 XFCE Edition has been pleasant to use.

SkyDrive for Mac Issue and Resolution

I have been using Microsoft's free SkyDrive cloud file storage and synchronization service for a couple of months now, and up until last week it ran very smoothly. I've been able to easily sync files between my MacBook Pro running Mac OS 10.7 Lion, and my PC running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

Last week the service stopped working on my Mac, and I kept getting an error about having to choose my SkyDrive folder. When I tried to do so I encountered an error complaining that SkyDrive cannot use a folder on a case-sensitive volume.

I double-checked my Mac's hard disk, and sure enough, it was partitioned as a single volume, using the "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" file system. This is not case sensitive. Repairing permissions didn't fix the error.

After much googling, I ran across several other folks who've encountered the same error message, one of which indicated that running Apple's Software update resolved the issue. Specifically, there is a Mac OS 10.7.4 Supplemental Update, the description of which is

This update addresses an issue where certain new APIs for file access are not present on some systems.

So, with SkyDrive uninstalled from the Mac, I ran Software Update and installed this patch, along with several others. When it finished I restarted the system just to be on the safe side.

After getting back to my desktop I ran the SkyDrive installer and it was able to complete without issues.

So, if you start getting weird error messages from the Mac SkyDrive client incorrectly complaining about a case sensitive file system, run Software Update from the Apple menu.

Evernote

A main use for my iPad is for note taking in meetings. I've looked at a few applications and have come to like Evernote.  The killer feature as I see it is that it automatically syncs notes via the cloud between my iPad, MacBook Pro, and iPhone.   Your notes can also be viewed online in a web browser.  This way I can access my notes pretty much wherever I am, since I always have at least my phone.  You can also have notes that are local-only, i.e., not synced across the Internet.

Among other things, I plan to start putting my technical reference notes into Evernote so I can easily find them, and so I can access them no matter where I am.

One caveat is that notes are not encrypted, so be careful about putting sensitive data on synced notes. Evernote does allow you to encrypt text within a note, but not the entire note.  Even so, I do not plan on putting online the spreadsheet I use to keep track of my accounts, usernames, and passwords. That will stay inside a TrueCrypt volume.

Another feature with which I'm experimenting is sharing notes.  This can be useful for groups.  So far, the one shared note I've created is Black Powder Revolver Notes, which I've shared with a friend who just picked up his first caplock revolver.

A basic Evernote account is free, while a Premium account is $5/month or $45/year.  Both allow you an unlimited number of notes in your account, but the free account is limited to 60 MB of uploads per month, and the max note size is 25 MB.  The figures for Premium accounts are 1 GB uploads per month and 50 MB per note.  The free version also has some limits on the types of files you can upload. You can see the full list of differences here.

Evernote is a handy program, especially for tech professionals. I recommend giving it a look.

Easytether

I’m spending today and tomorrow at the PBI Intellectual Property Institute.  The course materials were distributed as PDFs on a thumb 1 GB drive, which is a nice alternative from a pile of the normal yellow paperback books.  I brought Hobbit, my MSI Wind netbook with me but the PDFs PBI created have problems displaying in Foxit Reader.  So, I wanted to tether Hobbit to my Droid and download the Adobe Reader installer.

Unfortunately there’s no WiFi and yet again, PDAnet decided to not work.  Previously it’s been mostly usable under Windows but the Mac port was very flaky.  Today, I couldn’t get online in Windows 7.  I decided to give Easytether a try.  I installed it through the Android Market, then downloaded the desktop client on my Droid and transferred it to Hobbit via USB.

So far, so good. I’ll give it a try for awhile and if it continues to work well I’ll buy it.  For $9.99 if it continues to work it’ll be worth it.

Microsoft Security Essentials v2

Without much fanfare, Microsoft has released version 2 of its Security Essentials antivirus and antispyware program.  This was not an automatic update.  I read about it in the Urban Commandos forum on AR15.com and downloaded the installer manually.

I’ve been running MSE on a number of machines now for over a year and it’s been both trouble free and better performing than my previous choice in free AV software, AVG.

If I notice anything weird I’ll make a note of it.

Strange VMware vSphere 4.1 Issue

I ran into a weird issue over the past couple of days while trying to deploy a couple of CentOS 5.5 virtual machines onto my vSphere 4.1 server.

I created a VM to serve as my template for future VMs, then exported it as an OVF template to my laptop.  (I do not yet have a vCenter management server, so I'm stuck running the vSphere Client inside an XP VM running in VirtualBox on my MacBook Pro).  Probably due to our network, the export took a couple of hours.

I then deployed two VMs from the OVF file.  Import went much more quickly than the export, thankfully.  When I ran the "system-config-network" tool to configure the IP address, subnet mask, gateway, hostname, and DNS settings, I noticed there was a duplicate of eth0.  The dupe wasn't present in my original VM.  If the dupe was not removed, running /sbin/ifconfig displayed that eth0 had all the correct info, but the machine could not reach the network.

Through trial and error, I discovered a workaround.  Upon running system-config-network, if a duplicate eth0 is present, select it.  Then blank out all values, save and quit.  Next, reboot the VM and once again run system-config-network, and configure eth0.  After doing all this networking worked properly and I was able to SSH into the VM from my laptop.

Once we get a vCenter Server I shouldn't have jump through these hoops.  vCenter includes the ability to clone a VM without doing an export and import, so setting up new VMs should be much simpler and faster.

VMware Training and a New PC

Last week I attended a five day course on installing, configuring, and maintaining VMware vSphere 4.1.  My employer purchased an "all you can eat" license earlier this year, and I've been asked to implement it on one of our networks.  Since I have no prior experience with vSphere I asked my boss for training.  It turns out that we had some training credits which expire at the end of 2010, so I was able to register for this couse at no cost to my department.

I am very impressed with vSphere, as well as VMware's vSphere Client management program.  I find it well designed with a very good user interface.  It runs on Windows only, unfortunately.  I wish they had an OS X client.  At work I have a Windows 7 VM inside Paralles Desktop on my MacBook Pro which I can use.  I also recently setup a four year old Dell Precision Workstation 470n which I scrounged.  It's running Windows 7 x64 with 4 GBs of RAM so it runs much more smoothly than the VM on my laptop.

As a side note, the VMs I have running inside of Parallels Desktop have gotten a lot slower recently, especially the Windows 7 VM.  I am thinking of dumping PD and installing VirtualBox.

Because vSphere is basically a means to run other OSes as applications on a host I decided I wanted to have a way to refamiliarize myself with any number of OSes on a system at home.  To that end, yesterday I did something I haven't done in 12 years: I bought a new desktop PC running Windows.

For the past 10 years or so I've built my own machines.  I have two tower cases which are well designed and which have been used in several incarnations of motherboards, CPUs, and operating systems.  However, I just didn't feel like putting together a new PC, especially since I can now buy a very powerful system for under a grand.

So, yesterday I did some searching on Microcenter's website and purchased a PowerSpec B707 mini-tower system for $699 plus tax.  The basic specs are:

1. Intel Core i5 - 655K 3.2 GHz dual core CPU
2. Intel DH55TC motherboard with integrated video (VGA and DVI), sound, Gigabit LAN.
3. Samsung 1 TB hard disk
4. 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi (which I have disabled since I have an Ethernet connection)
5. DVD+/-RW drive
6. Media card reader
7. 300W power supply
8. Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
9. 4 GB of DDR3 RAM (expandalbe to 16 GB)

Because I bought the system with the idea of running other OSes inside VMs I wanted to increase the RAM.  I found an OCZ 4 GB kit (2 x 2 GB DIMMs) at Microcenter for $69.99 less a $20 mail-in rebate, so added that to the cart.

Microcenter allows you to place an order on their website and arrange for in-store pickup in 18 minutes, if they have the items in stock at your local store.  I did that and was in and out in about 10 minutes.

The PC came with a cheap Inland USB keyboard which I'm using currently but will probably replace due to the mushy feel.  It also came with an Inland mouse which I left in the packaging, in favor of the Logitech mouse I already had.  The machine didn't come with a monitor which was fine, I'm using an Acer AL2016W 20" widescreen LCD display that I bought last year.  I'm using the DVI port and it looks good.

The PowerSpec box came with no crapware installed which was a pleasant surpise.  It did include a trial version of ESET NOD32 antivirus which I removed in favor of MS Security Essentials, and also an installer for MS Office 2010 Starter Edition (lobotomized versions of Word and Excel supported by ads).

The machine is quite zippy for my uses: web browsing, light office use, as an SSH client, and to run VMs inside VirtualBox.  I haven't really pounded on the box yet but so far the CPU usage is minimal most of the time and I'm only using about half the 8 GB RAM that's installed in the system.

So far I've created VMs running Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows XP Pro SP3.  I unfortunately need the XP VM to run a VPN client which doesn't work in Windows 7; I hope to lose that particular need in the next few months.  My next VM will probably be Windows 2008 Server R2.

Another use of this box will be for me to evaluate various remote control applications.  I have GoToMyPC, LogMein, and TeamViewer in mind.

Firefox 4 Beta 6

Today I installed Firefox 4 Beta 6 on my MacBook Pro and a Dell Precision Workstation running Windows 7 Enterprise.

My initial impressions are favorable.  The user interface has been revised and is now somewhat Google Chromeish.  The default toolbars are minimalist and tabs are displayed on top the address bar, rather than below it.  I prefer having the tabs below the address bar so I'm happy to see that it remains an option.

Compared with Firefox 3.6, FF4B6 seems to load pages faster on both OS 10.6 and Win7.  This may in part be due to some of my extensions not being supported in FF4 yet.  However, FF4 is supposed to offer speed improvements.

I used FF4B6 for most of the day and didn't run into any noticeable issues.  We'll see how it goes with more use but so far I'm pleased with it.

Dropbox on Android Phones

A few months ago I mentioned that I started using Dropbox for backing up some of my critical files, and syncronizing them between my MacBook Pro and my MSI Wind netbook.  I recently installed the Dropbox application on my Droid and was impressed with it this morning.

Using my Droid, I took a picture of a screen to record a firmware revision.  I figured that I would then email it to myself.  Instead, when I went into the Droid's picture gallery and selected the "Share" menu, not only was I given the opportunity to send it via email, MMS, Facebook, Twitter or Picasa, but to add it to my Dropbox.  I chose Dropbox and by the time I was back at my desk, the photo was in my Mac's Dropbox folder.  Compared with email or MMS, this eliminates the steps of addressing and sending an email.  And it's certainly more convenient than digging out a USB cable to connect the phone to my computer.

A basic 2 GB account is free but if you refer someone you'll get an extra 250 MB of space, up to 8 GB total.  You can also get a free 250 MB by 5 of the 6 tasks listed in the "Getting Started" tab viewable when you login to your Dropbox account on the web.

{Blantant self promotion.}If you're interested in this sort of product and want to try Dropbox, please click on my referral link, here.  I could use a little more space.{/Blatant self promotion.}

Mac OS X to Droid Tethering Over USB

I occasionally find it handy to tether my laptop to my Droid for Internet access.  I've used PDANet for this in the past but due to some kind of an update, USB tethering to my Mac broke and I have not been able to fix it.  Blutetooth tethering works but it's slow.

Today I did some googling and ran across these instructions for tethering using free software.   It requires a more involved setup than PDANet but it works and the speed is pretty decent, about 1.5 Mbps down x 0.45 Mbps up.


I noticed that when I terminated the tethering session, before I could reconnect I had to physically disconnect my phone from my laptop and restart the azilink program on my phone.  That's a bit inconvenient but  I'm willing to put up with a little quirkiness when dealing with free software.

Edit 5/23/10:

I'd call this pretty darn acceptable:

Sharing Volumes Between Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux

As anyone who's read this blog for awhile knows, I use a couple of different laptops.  My primary machine is a Macbook Pro running Mac OS 10.6.2, while my secondary machine -- Hobbit -- is an MSI Wind netbook, currently running Windows 7 Ultimate.

The Mac is owned by my employer while I own the Hobbit.  Since I use the Mac for personal purposes as well as work-related tasks (which is OK with my employer) I needed to have a reliable means of backup in the event I change jobs.

On my desk at work I have a Lacie Quadra drive which I use for Time Machine backups over FireWire 800 (it also supports FW400, USB, and eSATA).  It would be pretty easy to restore my data from it to a personally-owned Mac.  However, getting that data onto a PC would be a real chore, requiring the use of a Mac as an intermediary.

I also wanted a portable means of backup that would work with either machine and that wasn't dependent on a network which might not be available.  I might also need to access my data using a Linux system.  The cheapest means of doing so is a USB hard disk.

The USB disk I chose is a Western Digital Elements 640 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAR6400ABK-NESN.  It's a 2.5" drive in a plastic external case.  It's bus powered, so no external power supply is required. Compared with the FW800 connection on my LaCie, or even a FW400 connection, USB 2.0 is noticeably slower for sustained transfers.  However, this isn't much of an issue once the initial sync is done.

One problem you run into when sharing disks between Windows and either Mac OS X or Linux boxes is the NTFS file system.  Linux has its own filesystems.  Macs use HFS+.  PCs use NTFS.  Mac OS 10.6 includes read-only support for NTFS.  Windows 7 cannot read HFS+ disks without third party software.

Luckily, there are solutions for sharing an NTFS volume between a Windows machine, and a Linux or Mac OS X machine.  Th one I picked is called NTFS-3G and is available in a higher-performance, proprietary version, as well as a free open source version.  As described in Wikipedia, "NTFS-3G is an open source cross-platform implementation of the Microsoft Windows NTFS file system with read-write support."  NTFS-3G is availabele for OS X, Linux,

I installed the open source version of NTFS-3G on my MBP and so far it's worked very well.  I have'n had problems syncing data between the Mac and the WD disk using CronoSync.  Likewise, I am able to sync the WD disk to Hobbit, using Microsoft's free SyncToy.

Now I have a backup which I can share between my Macs, Windows and Linux boxes.  That's pretty handy.

Application Integration

Here's a good example of application integration:

This Sunday I'm planning to attend a shooting match at the New Holland Rifle & Pistol Club.  I entered the event in my Google Calendar, including the address.  After I saved the event I reopened it and I saw that Google Calendar had automatically pulled up a map of the location.

A minute or so later I pulled up the event in the Calendar app on my Droid, which is heavily tied-in with my Google account.  With the event open I am able to pull up the map and tap a link to get driving directions.  Additionally, the Droid has a built-in GPS and will be able to give me turn-by-turn directions.

Slick barely begins how cool this is.

Zero Day Vulnerability in Adobe Reader

There is a zero day security exploit for the Adobe PDF Reader that is currently out in the wild and for which there is no patch.  It exploits a vulnerability in Reader’s Javascript implementation.

Details here.

If you must use Adobe Reader you should disable Javascript until this is fixed.

• On Windows, launch Adobe Reader and go to Edit > Preferences > JavaScript and uncheck Enable Acrobat JavaScript.
• On a Mac, launch Adobe Reader go to the Adobe Reader menu > Preferences > JavaScript and uncheck Enable Acrobat JavaScript.
  

Alternative free PDF viewers are Preview.app on Mac (included with OS X), and Foxit Reader on Windows.

Windows 7 on the MSI Wind U100 Netbook

Earlier this week I decided to install Windows 7 on Hobbit, my MSI Wind netbook PC.  Hobbit shipped with Windows XP Home SP3 installed, to which I added Ubuntu Linux in a dual boot configuration.

I have a couple reasons for installing Windows 7.  First, it's a much more up-to-date OS than XP.  In playing around with it at work I've been impressed.  Second, as an IT professional it behooves me to keep up with new technology.

To install Windows 7 on Hobbit, I first needed to acquire a USB optical drive.  I bought an LG Electronics GP08LU10 8X Slim LightScribe DVD+/-RW External Drive. (11/17/09 - Link updated from NewEgg to Amazon.)  Aside from creating the recovery media, booting DBAN from System Rescue CD, and installing W7, it will allow me to access optical media more conveniently on Hobbit.  (Previously, I've copied files from CDs and DVDs to a thumb drive using another computer, or accessed discs over the network.)

I then burned an XP recovery CD.  MSI ships the Wind with an XP recovery partition but no media.  They do include a utility to create a recovery disc. 

For my W7 install I wanted a clean slate, i.e., no OSes on Hobbit's hard drive.  I selected a Custom install, deleted the existing partitions, and created a 50 GB partition for C:\.  (I later formatted the remained of the drive as D:\ after I was up and running.)

The install went smoothly and all my hardware was detected.  After installing the Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus/antimalware suite, Firefox, and a few other apps, I used Hobbit over the weekend.  (My previous favorite AV program was AVG.  The last couple of versions have become increasingly bloated.  I've had good results with MS's offering.)

I am impressed.  Windows 7 runs very nicely on this hardware (1.6 GHz Atom CPU, 2 GB Kingston RAM, Intel 4965agn WiFi card).  In fact, I'd say it runs better on Hobbit than XP Home or Ubuntu 9.04 did.

So far so good.  I'll be using this setup frequently.  But if the initial impressions hold up I think MS has a winner on its hands.

Blackberry Desktop Manager for Mac

Last Friday, Research in Motion finally released the Blackberry Desktop Manager for Mac.

Heretofore, Mac users wanting to sync their BlackBerries with their Macs have had to use either PocketMac or Mark/Space's The Missing Sync.  The free PocketMac was a turd, to put it mildly.  In my experience it worked for a few syncs with my BlackBerry 8330 and then became very unstable.  The not-free Missing Sync was better but still buggy.  E.g., I kept running into calendar corruption issues.

In early September a late Beta of BDM for Mac leaked onto the 'net.  I downloaded it and gave it a try and it seemed to work OK.  While TMS allowed me only to sync, BDM can also backup the BlackBerry and upgrade the device's firmware.  So far, so good.

I'm glad to see RIM finally paying more attention to Mac users.  Not all of us have iPhones.