WebM is based on the Matroska container MKV and encodes video with VP8 with audio with the Ogg Vorbis codec.

Development versions of Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Chromium already support WebM. Patches for FFmpeg, GStreamer, filters for DirectShow and a VP8 SDK are available. The latest built of VLC plays VP8/WebM as well.

YouTube offers HTML5 content, too. You can test it after joining the HTML5 Beta at youtube.com/html5. A search for webm on YouTube will return several demos available as HTML5, for example this WebM Demo, or Free Fall, the amazing film with world champion freediver Guillaume Nery.

Microsoft announced that IE9 will support VP8/WebM in addition to H.264.

Source: c’t issue 13, 2010

Links:

• YouTube HTML5 Test Drive
• Firefox Nightly Builds supporting WebM
• VLC with WebM support
• The WebM project, tools, filters, plugins

The first movie we watched on the first full day of the film festival was Mundane History from Thailand, directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong:

Mundane History

Ake, a young man recently paralyzed from the waist down, sits sullenly in bed all day long in his family’s declining mansion, refusing even the little pleasures available to him. His mysterious and stern father Thanin hires a male nurse, Pun, to care for Ake and keep him company. But a jaded Ake rebukes and ignores Pun’s quietly good-natured attempts to cheer him up, challenging Pun to find new ways to distract his patient. When the thaw finally comes, secrets and changes emerge – both personal and cosmic.

—from the Film Festival Guide

The film community in Thailand was a completely unknown entity to me until we saw Syndromes and a Century in 2007. I enjoyed Syndromes and a Century a lot, and I had the feeling I might like Mundane History as well.

Both films shared some similarities in their quiet, meditative pace and non-linearity. And the way Syndromes and a Century was previously described as “a stream of haunting sci-fi imagery worthy of Kubrick’s 2001″ could actually apply more to a few moments in Mundane History. But that’s were the similarities end.

A few minutes into the movie the screen went black and presented something that looked like end credits. I was puzzled and amused that several people left the theater in this very moment. Did they really think they bought a ticket for a 20 minute short? Maybe they just filled some time while waiting for another screening. Later the film burned and caused a few minutes interruption. I was very surprised. After all it was the first movie on the first day of the festival.

But the movie presented a few surprises as well. Most notably the music which reminded me a bit of post-rock bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Explosions in the Sky. Responsible for the music in this movie were Malaysian band Furniture and the Thai group Photo Sticker Machine which are worth a closer listen.

Another surprising moment was a scene featuring masturbation and full-frontal male nudity. I thought this might have upset the American MPAA judges who are known to appreciate violence but make a fuss about scenes with male-nudity or masturbation. I still remember Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut years ago, when certain scenes had to be blacked out for a non X-rating. These scenes turned out to be not as all as scandalous as they made you believe. I was wondering how would Thailand treat such an unusually graphic scene? When I looked up some information I found that this scene indeed caused it to become the first Thai film under Thailand’s motion-picture rating system to be given the most-restrictive 20+ rating. Be sure to bring your ID if you want to see this film in Thailand.

In contrasting moments of silence, weariness, frustration and anger, bitterness and disappointments, dreams and hopes this film also made some comments about Thailand’s class society. Mundane History surprised again later with the psychedelic cg-animated exploding star and the Cesarean birth of the child, a graphic scene during which made a point by showing how the umbilical cord was cut twice. Perhaps symbolizing the separation from the mother followed by a separation from father, class, expectencies?

I don’t want to attempt to analyze and over-interpret these scenes, but I couldn’t help to think of 2001 — A Space Odyssey when they hit the screen. No doubt, Mundane History was totally unrelated to Kubrick’s movie, but these two scenes were so unexpected and felt so out of place, I had to wonder if this could have also been a nod to one of the most remarkable movies in history of cinema. This was probably nothing but a coincidence…

Too bad there was no Q&A afterwards. I’d have been curious to hear more about this film.

Beijing Taxi

After a short break we entered our second screening of the day with Beijing Taxi, a documentary by Miao Wang about…

Three Beijing taxi drivers – two male, one female – prepare for an explosion of international customers in the days leading up to the 2008 Summer Olympics. Fifty-something Bai Jiwen came of age during the Cultural Revolution, and faces some harsh realities with hardened humor; Thirty-something Zhou Yi, remains optimistically grounded in his traditional lifestyle; while thirty-something mother Wei Caixia is a financially-minded go-getter driven on finding a more comfortable life.

—from the Film Festival Guide

This synopsis interested me. I had the feeling I would see a different, more realistic view of China’s people and culture that transcends the stereotypes the media generally seems to be most attracted to. When I read that it was co-shot by Sean Price Williams, who already caught my eye last year with Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo and in 2007 with Frownland, I had to put this film on my must-see list.

Beijing Taxi absolutely met my expectations, even exceeded them. It not only presented a character study of three individuals with their dreams, hopes and daily lives, but also details of Beijing I haven’t known or heard of before. In old Beijing, one of the taxi drivers explained, people didn’t need to be ambitious. The new and changing Beijing with the generation born in the 80s is very different and driven in comparison. I also didn’t know that to control traffic on Beijing’s roads they only permitted even license plate numbers on some days, and only odd numbers on other days.

The music in Beijing Taxi was remarkable, too! Beijing artists and bands like Sand, Zhou Yunpeng, Sound Fragment or Miserable Faith deliver music I would have never heard without this film. I may not understand the lyrics, but I love the sound and mood of Together by Sound Fragment. Sand’s Consumer’s Song is great, too. A few tracks can be found on the movie website at www.beijingtaxithefilm.com. The site also has a playlist of the beautiful score by Stephen Ulrich and Itamar Ziegler. Beijing Taxi was one of my highlights at the festival this year.

Dogtooth

Father (Christos Stergioglou) lives with his wife and children on an estate not far from the big city. He’s raised three teenagers in a gated community of sorts – except that the community contains only his house, and his children have never travelled further than their own backyard. Despite having no friends, no knowledge of telephones or computers, and a limited understanding of television and radio, some “tainted” words pertaining to sex, violence, and travel do somehow enter their vocabulary. Thus, they’re told that “telephones” are salt shakers, that “the sea” is their living-room armchair, that the cat that scampers into their yard is a rare and dangerous beast, and that the airplanes they see in the sky are no larger than toys – leaving the teens to play (and live) in the distorted world Father’s lies create.

Far from understanding that they’re prisoners of a sort, the children believe Father when he tells them that they, like him, will someday experience the outside world – as soon as their third set of teeth comes in.

This unsettling vision offers a riveting hybrid of dark comedy and psychological thriller as it explores language and morals, and probes the point at which unconventional parenting crosses over into social experiment or even abuse. Dogtooth won the Prize Un Certain Regard at Cannes, played Toronto and New Directors/New Films, and, in the humble opinion of this programmer, stands as one of the great accomplishments in recent world cinema. (Eric Allen Hatch)

—from the Film Festival Guide

Doogtooth. Wow… I don’t think I have ever seen a movie from Greece, and this debut has definitely left a lasting impression. It created memories I will not easily forget. It was probably the biggest surprise of this festival, too. This movie wasn’t what I expected after reading some comments and watching a clip. I expected a dark comedy… and what I saw was dark, yes, but not a comedy in my opinion.

There were scenes that would have been somewhat amusing in a different context and a different movie. In Dogtooth’s context, however, I quickly lost any desire to laugh about what presented itself on the screen. And I don’t mean it in a negative way. Not in the slightest!

Dogtooth was a true masterpiece in how effectively it managed to establish an uncomfortable, disturbing and nightmarish microcosm of years of psychological abuse. It took what could perhaps be called parenting to new and perverse extremes. But if you step back and take a look behind the atrocities taking place in this family, you might find some analogies to the real world.

Dogtooth

We grow up with truths and imprints provided by our parents and closed family unit. These truths don’t necessarily match with other families’ truths. If we expand our social circles and look at what’s happening in other families, a class room, office, or in the society, culture, religion, country as a whole… these truths or half-truths are often biased, and may not represent the ultimate reality we believe or trust it to be.

The more closed the borders of this social unit are, the more likely are these alleged truths further away from reality than its members might realize. It’s easy to find examples in closed neighborhood communities, prisons, religious cults, East Germany when it was still separated, or dictatorships throughout history. But even in the open enlightened world most of us live in nowadays, the truths presented to us, for example through the media (tabloid or serious), are often just a very distorted image of reality.

Truths need to be shared and transported very carefully, with reason, especially to children who have to rely on their parents and authority figures in their lives. What took place in Dogtooth, even though it appeared very extreme and out of this world, could really take place somewhere, sometime, more easily than one might expect.

Dogtooth reminded me a bit of Michael Haneke. I didn’t think it was a dark comedy. Dark comedies, in my opinion, present terrible and horrific events or actions in a humorous manner. I would count films like American Psycho, Heathers, Secretary, Very Bad Things, After Hours or Fight Club to the genre of dark comedies, but not Dogtooth. I was surprised to hear people in the audience laugh. But yes, maybe it was just their way to cope with the horror that unfolded in front of their eyes.

Dogtooth was really excellent and extraordinary, definitely one of my favorites this year. But would I recommend anyone to go see it? I don’t know — I always hesitate to recommend very disturbing movies even if I appreciated them personally. This doesn’t happen very often, I think the only other movie I felt a similar hesitation about was Lars von Trier’s Antichrist a year or so ago. Maybe I don’t want to anger my friends with uncomfortable or traumatic movie experiences :) However, if you are ready and willing to take a challenge, I’m sure Dogtooth will give it to you, make you think long after you’ve left the theater, and provide you with a memory for life.

Funny People Shorts

There are not many opportunities to see short films, especially not on the big screen. But you can’t watch them on television or rent them on DVD either. The film festival provides some great and rare opportunities to discover some mini masterpieces. Several short film programs looked really interesting to me this year, especially Dark Comedy Shorts. I would love to see Daniel Martinico’s Bike Thief! And The Armoire by Jamie Travis’ whose Saddest Boy in the World was one of the short film highlights a few years ago. But, I didn’t manage to fit it into our schedule.

What I did manage to fit in were the Funny People Shorts which seemed like a nice way to ease the weight of some of the other screenings we attended and would attend later. Funny people could be found in…

Good People

On her way to work one morning, Amy comes across a suicide note. She doesn’t know who wrote it, or where they are, but she is convinced she needs to take action. The problem is that she only has until 5 o’clock to find the person who wrote it, and help them to do what’s right…

—from the Film Festival Guide

Haha… a few weeks have past now after the film festival, but I remember how much I enjoyed Alex LeMay’s short. Completed early 2009 it’s not the newest film anymore, but it was great to have it in the series. The conclusion was great, and quite surprising (to me at least) :)

Planet Sun

Over-tanned and distracted employees of a strip-mall tanning salon ignore and insult customers as they obsesses over themselves and their boyfriends in this comedic short, which had its world premiere at Slamdance 2010.

—from the Film Festival Guide

What I still remember best about Matthew Atkinson’s short is Jim Annan whose name I didn’t know before, but his face that looks a lot like somebody’s face I know. Every time I saw him on the Verizon commercials I had to ask Alice “Isn’t that Tim?” It’s an old face recognition game I’ve been playing for years. And there I spotted him in Planet Sun. I looked him up later, and there: I was right! It really is the guy from the commercials. However, it also proves that Jim and Tim are not the same person or even related :)

Poi Dogs

Poi Dogs is the story of two local Hawaii teenagers and their awkward attempts at expressing a budding romantic interest in each other. Toa, a tough-acting lineman on a crappy high school football team, has just lost the big game. Distraught and alone, he drives home on his old ramshackle moped, which breaks down in the shadow of an abandoned sugar mill. Enter Anela, the tough-acting tuba player on his team’s marching band.

—from the Film Festival Guide

Joel Moffett’s short was sweet and amusing. I especially appreciated the moped. The background scenery reminded me of an area I pass through on one of my bicycle routes.

Gayby

Jenn and Matt are best friends from college who are now in their 30s. Lately, their relationship has dwindled to the occasional social-networking exchange. In an effort to ‘reconnect,’ they decide to have a baby together, taking the easiest, cheapest route of just having sex—even though Matt is gay and Jenn is straight. From the award-winning director of Woman in Burka (MFF 2008). Warning: this film contains an incredibly awkward sex scene.

—from the Film Festival Guide

Gayby with Jenn Harris and Matthew Wilkas

Absolutely brilliant and funny! I loved it. This 12 minute short by Jonathan Lisecki was my favorite in this short program. The title alone was great, but the interaction between the stars was priceless.

We also saw Trevor Cohen’s

Public Access

A satirical short about a dysfunctional suburban couple whose problems are falsely resolved by watching a talk show on public-access television. When the show is cancelled, the couple is forced to take matters into their own hands.

—from the Film Festival Guide

and James Johnston’s

Receive Bacon

The charming tale of a raunchy bathroom tryst interrupted by an unfortunate case of the giggles. From James Johnston, the director of the short Merrily, Merrily (MFF 2008) and producer of the feature St. Nick (MFF 2009).

—from the Film Festival Guide

Both were funny, and I enjoyed them both, but I can’t think of anything meaningful to say about them. So I will just leave it there. :)

The last screening of the day was

Daddy Longlegs

Thirty-something film projectionist Lenny (Ronald Bronstein) lives in a studio apartment in New York City, jumping from adventure to adventure and, when possible, from bed to bed. His love of spontaneity and loathing of structure collide with his responsibilities as father to two precocious children, 9-year-old Sage (Sage Ranaldo) and 7-year-old Frey (Frey Ranaldo), who he cares for just a few weeks out of the year. While his freewheeling ways and vivid imagination often delight Sage and Frey, it also makes their stays with Lenny frantic and chaotic, filled with impromptu babysitters, unexpected daytrips, and bizarre encounters on the streets. When one of Lenny’s hasty solutions to a scheduling conflict at work leads to high drama, Lenny and the people around him are forced to take a hard look at his parenting skills and the blurry line between childhood and adulthood.

This is the Safdie Brothers’ singularly offbeat ode to their own father and childhoods, concentrating on the emotional truth found in their memories rather than factual autobiography. As with Frownland (MFF 2007, directed by Daddy Longlegs star Bronstein), Daddy Longlegs seems to exist simultaneously in the present day and the New York Cities of the 70s and 80s. The instinctive connections their lens makes to the last 40 years of their city’s cinematic history – from the underground to big names like Cassavetes, Jarmusch, and Ferrara (who also appears) – help the film stake its own major place in that still-unfolding timeline. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, and never predictable, it all culminates in a stunner of a closing shot, one of the most resonant in recent memory. (Eric Allen Hatch)

—from the Film Festival Guide

I hadn’t read much about Daddy Longlegs before we went to see it, so I was quite unprepared and didn’t know what I was about to see. I have to admit, it took nothing more than reading about Frownland director Ronald Bronstein’s acting debut in Daddy Longlegs to spark my interest.

Frownland a few years ago was one of the most memorable favorites at the Maryland Film Festival. And although he didn’t direct Daddy Longlegs, I had the feeling I was going to watch something special, personal and real, a film you would only find once in a few years. I compared Ronald Bronstein to one of my master filmmakers once in one of my posts and I still think he is member of a new generation of filmmakers who could add a lot of timeless brilliance and depth to cinema as an art-form, and produce movies that will find new fans even decades later when many of today’s major or independent productions are long forgotten.

I haven’t been familiar with Josh and Benny Safdie before, but I was curious to find out if they, too, created something that would speak to my taste in filmmaking. And after watching Daddy Longlegs I have found the answer. Their movie was a total success, brilliant from beginning to end!

In Daddy Longlegs I watched and followed Lenny who had his children with him for one of the brief periods in a year, as he slips further and further down the spiral of stress and chaos. I was wondering how much further he could let it go on like this without taking control and responsibility for once. A grown-up child trying to take care of children who were more grown-up than he was. For a good while it was easy to forgive him for his irresponsibility, take his side and defend him when mother and teacher of the kids give him a hard time, but eventually he takes it one step too far and it doesn’t seem so easily forgivable anymore.

Funny that John Cassavetes was mentioned in the film festival guide above. During the festival and shortly afterward I was introduced to his movies with Faces and Husbands both of which he created in the style of cinéma vérité. I love the style and perspective both of these films presented to me, and that’s what I really loved about Daddy Longlegs, too. Other movies in the mumblecore genre have this in common as well.

Daddy Longlegs surprised me with an appearance of Abel Ferrara and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo. The two boys in the movie are actually Lee Ranaldo’s kids Sage and Frey Ranaldo.

I couldn’t conclude it any better than this reviewer on IMDB:

It’s autobiographical, yet collaborative and imaginative. It’s improvisational, yet very well planned. It’s appalling, yet also appealing — a film that sticks in the craw but also lingers in the mind and the heart. It signals the arrival of yet another team of film-making brothers whom we need to watch.

—Chris Knipp

That’s so true, I couldn’t agree more. I absolutely loved this film and know I will be watching it again sometime. One of my favorites this year. Congratulations Josh, Benny, Ronnie, and everybody involved in making this movie. With Daddy Longlegs you have created a masterpiece. Oh, and the best opening scene I have seen in a long time! I’d love to insert a clip of it here :)

I wonder why its title is listed as “Go Get Some Rosemary” on IMDB. Legal issues?

From left to right: Josh Safdie, Ronnie Bronstein, and Programming Administrator Scott Braid

This was the end of our amazing movie-trip on Friday of the MD Film Festival. It took me forever to write this, but I hope I will find some time to write a bit about Saturday and Sunday very soon!

The Charles Theater

During this year’s film festival I once again realized how much I love the Charles Theater and the Maryland Film Festival. I always appreciated classic, independent or international movies and documentaries and was eager to see them on the big screen, but when I grew up I didn’t have easy access to them. My hometown in Germany used to have a hand full of screens for the big mainstream releases, and everything used to be dubbed in German, so if I wanted to see something the way it was intended I had to import videos from other countries, and make sure my vhs-player was able to handle the foreign video-formats. In those days it would have taken years to download a video. Occasionally I could tune to arte, a French/German tv-channel that sometimes presented movies with subtitles and original audio tracks. This channel helped me discover a number of interesting and unusual movies, but I also imported many of my favorite movies and directors from the UK, Belgium, Canada, and the US.

When we attended the Maryland Film Festival for the first time in 2002 I knew what a priceless treasure we had found with the Charles Theater — not only during the film festival, but also all year long. Where else would you ever get an opportunity to watch a dozen Ingmar Bergman movies on the big screen? Where else could an event like the film festival take place if not at the Charles?

Last week I thought to myself: “What if the Charles had to close one day?” Would there be a film festival? Would there be any alternatives? Other theaters, like the historical, famous and celebrated Senator had to struggle for many years. I can only hope the Charles will continue to do well. Baltimore would become a film desert without it. Or even worse, it would be the death of the city. It is really important to support this theater. If you are slightly interested in good movies, I recommend to check their schedule on a weekly basis. Some movies are only there for a week, so be sure not to miss them! But enough of my shameless blatant advertising insert.

Preparations

Eight years ago we attended the festival for the first time, six years ago we joined the Friends of the Festival sponsor program, three years ago we decided to attend the festival with All Access passes rather than buying so many single tickets. This year we increased the number of movies we were going to watch on a single day from previously three or four to a lot of five per day! We also broke with some of our old traditions and decided not to watch the classic 3D movie, the silent movie with live music, and the annual selection by John Waters. We also skipped the closing night this year in favor of Mother’s Day and a mother’s pleasure to have dinner with us and the rest of the family.

We kept the Opening Night of course, but on the other days we decided to focus on the amazing selection of new and international films in this year’s line-up. It was quite difficult for us again to come up with a weekend schedule. But I think we are getting used to it, facing the same problem every year. I just added the movies we were not able to see to our Netflix queue. Hopefully they will get released one day so we can catch up with them later.

So this year we were going to see:

• Opening Night Shorts at MICA
• Mundane History
• Beijing Taxi
• Dogtooth
• Funny People Shorts
• Daddy Longlegs
• Mama
• Faces
• And Everything is Going Fine
• Liverpool
• Until the Light Takes Us
• General Orders No. 9, and
• Earthling

I will write a little bit about them in this and my following blog posts.

The Opening Night

Jed Dietz opened the 12^th Annual Maryland Film Festival a few weeks ago on Thursday, May 6 at the MICA Brown Center with a series of seven short films all of which I enjoyed. I don’t remember the exact order in which these shorts were presented, but one of the first films was Bikini Lighters by Andrew Blackwell and Andrew Goldman. It was about a few kids who shoplifted a bag full of cigarette lighters to create an explosion in the woods.

We also saw Junko’s Shamisen by Sol Friedman which stood out as one of my favorite shorts that evening. A young girl in old Japan returns to her grandfather and finds him murdered. When she leaves to find another place to live she encounters the evil samurai who killed her grandfather. This film was a hybrid of live-action, cell, stop-motion and computer animation. Stylish, visually attractive, funny and dark… I can imagine watching a full feature created in a similar fashion. Thinking of hybrids…imagine Sol Friedman had added some of his creative magic to A Scanner Darkly a few years ago! I could have loved this film.

The Late Mr. Mokun Williams by Kenneth Price was about a letter that sends a farmer on a mission to help a girl in Nigeria. It didn’t take long to figure out where this story was going, but that didn’t matter at all. It was a great idea, and very funny. I can imagine a whole series of shorts to visualize certain mail or email pieces I received over the years.

Patrick Bergeron’s experimental short film LoopLoop can be described as moving photographic sculpture. Short films that withdraw themselves from a standard form risk to be misunderstood like some I have seen in previous years, but I was fascinated and impressed by this one. The film festival guide describes it as a sequence “[...] mimicking the way memories are replayed in the mind,” and if I think about it, it really did succeed with it.

Monroe St. by Durier Ryan is a film about finding the courage to open up — the story about a teen who is passionately capturing his neighborhood in Brooklyn with a borrowed video camera but keeps his creative ambitions a secret from his girlfriend.

Another remarkable short film was Slow Pitch in Relief by Mark Cummins which was set in 1957 and told the story of Bill Herman, a door to door salesman who meets Jolene, a working single mother. To impress her son he told him the story that he once played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. This film’s look and feel reminded me of something that really could have been produced in the 50s. Mark Cummins, who played Bill Herman looked as if he traveled through time and arrived straight from the 50s. I was fascinated and impressed. Mark Cummins is no newcomer. When I looked him up on IMDB I found that he’s been active as actor since the early 80s.

My favorite of the opening night was Voice on the Line by Kelly Sears. Voice on the Line was a brilliant collage of vintage archive footage, bit and pieces from many different sources, tied together to a unique fictitious document on the history of telecommunications since the cold war era. Brilliant from beginning to end! I loved how the animated wallpaper background served as a glue throughout. It was very inspiring. I felt invited to begin collecting media artifacts myself. During this film I was wondering if Kelly Sears had the story and narration first and looked for clips to support her story later, or if she started off with the clips and then added the narration & story to it later. During the Q&A she explained that she had all these telephone operators and thought she needed to do something with them, and the story kinda grew around these clips.

Left to right: Andrew Blackwell (Bikini Lighters), Mark Cummins (Slow Pitch in Relief), Durier Ryan (Monroe St.), Kenneth Price (The Late Mr. Mokun Williams), Festival director Jed Dietz, Patrick Bergeron (LoopLoop), Sol Friedman (Junko's Shamisen), Kelly Sears (Voice On the Line), Director of Programming Eric Allen Hatch, Programming Administrator Scott Braid

We concluded the opening night with a fine bottle of imported beer outside the crowded MICA hall and were ready for the 3-day movie marathon. Were we? Stay tuned, my next post follows shortly :)

So what happened in the last few weeks and months? To be honest, mostly work and not much play. My day job as graphic designer has become very busy approaching the end of the year. Not only is it the biggest season for sales and advertising with Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas and New Year, but everybody is trying to tie up their loose ends before the new year. And this crashes down onto my desk like an avalanche.

In addition to my regular day job I have done some freelance graphic design work and also taken on some programming work again: some osCommerce customizations for one client, two custom WordPress plugins for another. I hope this work will eventually lead to a full-time role as web-developer again.

Will 2010 become a new year as a web-developer? I really hope so, it’s been much too long to be out of touch with technology. :)

I haven’t posted any pictures yet, but I did carve a movie-themed pumpkin again last Halloween. This year it was based on Pan’s Labyrinth. I wasn’t able to carve more during the week. And I have to admit that I never got into the right Halloween mood this year. I think next year I should start thinking about pumpkins a bit earlier.

In the little spare time I found I started to knit! It’s the perfect way to relax and forget about the work and computers after a long day. Slowly but surely I managed to complete my first scarf. Next I will work on a hat, then a simple sweater, and eventually I would like to attempt an Icelandic sweater.

I also started playing with a NerdKit to learn about practical electronics, microcontrollers and how to program them. In the near future I plan to share more posts about this as well, including photos, diagrams, perhaps also a few videos and screencasts. I would like to add more technical and educational content during the next year. While it feels good to share some impressions and thoughts with the world, it’s even more rewarding if I’m able to help somebody with an article.

My bicycling and fitness journey has moved a bit into the background. I still ride my bike every day (rain or shine) for transportation and commute, but I didn’t have the right mindset for an extensive exercise regimen in addition to my daily rides. I did complete the 100 (consecutive) push-up challenge. I actually enjoyed and appreciated the little time required to do them.

So this is a brief summary of what has moved my world for the last few months and what will come up on my blog very soon. If you are interested in PHP, WordPress, osCommerce, Java, Javascript and some C/C++ development, Ubuntu Linux, hardware-/software, electronics, graphic design, music, film, photography, knitting, bicycling, and fitness, or just in a bit more about me personally… this space will hopefully not disappoint you. Stay tuned for more in the next few weeks! :)

Armée des Ombres by Jean-Pierre Melville

Chatte à Deux Têtes by Jacques Nolot

Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran by François Dupeyron

Les Quatre cents coups by François Truffaut

Les Triplettes de Belleville by Sylvain Chomet

Les chansons d’amour by Christophe Honoré

Une affaire de femmes by Claude Chabrol

De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté by Jacques Audiard

Alphaville by Jean-Luc Godard

Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux by Jean-Luc Godard

Later, when the first few warmer days arrived in spring I was happy, but I still struggled to recover from the injury and the overall exhaustion from my winter rides. Quite pitiful considering I didn’t ride any long routes for two, three or more hours but only my daily commute to work. In June, I finally began to feel up and ready for a few longer rides again and started to work on it again.

Last week I started to record my rides and workouts again, inspired by the MapMyRide.com Tour de France challenge, and I will continue this until later in fall or winter. Next winter I plan to walk more, especially on bad-weather days, and perhaps keep the rides for the less ugly days. I’m not sure if I can keep myself off the bike yet, but I will try. Hopefully I can get through the cold months without doing that damage to myself again.

Today I went out for a 50-something minute ride to Druid Hill Lake, passing the Baltimore Zoo, continuing on the Jones Falls Trail through Woodberry and back to the Hopkins campus on Clipper Mill Road, Falls Road, Wyman Park Drive. I totally forgot how pleasant and relaxing a ride can very early on a Sunday morning and not having to deal with rush-hour traffic, maniacal motorists, bus-drivers, trash trucks and filthy alleys. I had a hard time motivating myself, but as usual, I didn’t regret getting out of the house around 6am and riding on calm and quiet streets and through a beautifully smelling green of the park. What a contrast to the weekdays! It was just what I needed after a long week. Perfection.

My condition was surprisingly good, too. Usually I struggle my way up/down to work, but I didn’t have this problem today. Even on the uphill segments I managed to keep my calm and climb it without much pain. The mindset, unforced and stress-free mental state and the quiet, calming roads without any doubt have a huge impact on my own condition. Something to keep in mind whenever I don’t feel very motivated! Some stats:

Date/Time:

07/12/2009 06:16 AM

Route:

Homestead, Charles St, Hopkins Campus, Druid Hill Lake, passing the Baltimore Zoo, continuing on the Jones Falls Trail through Woodberry and back to Hopkins Campus on Clipper Mill Road, Falls Road, Wyman Park Drive, and back to Homestead.

Length:

Approx. 9.7 miles

Traffic:

Easy going most of the way.

Weather:

Warm and a bit humid, but still pleasant enough.

Bike:

Jamis Durango Hardtail Mod. with 26×2.2 Maxxis Holy Roller

Heartrate/Elevation:

(Heartrate recording didn’t work properly during the second half of the route.)

If you do man nano, you’ll see there’s a /etc/nanorc config file. Edit this to comment out #set historylog.

This will prevent sudo nano commands from creating the root users .nano_history in your home directory, which nano can’t read when called by your user account. After commenting it out, then delete it with sudo rm .nano_history.

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=204307

Today I’m trying to setup a server that makes my music available to any of my computers and operating systems in the LAN, and possibly even outside the local network. At the same time I would like to add last.fm again, however, not linked to each individual player, but only once, to the music server.

I stored my music files on an external network drive. This music folder is a Samba share and accessible from other computers on the network.

VLC is known for its network streaming features and I wrote a little about it back in May. While I use it occasionally to stream videos from one computer to another I was looking for a solution that could work better as a permanent configuration, well-suited as a music library. That’s how I stumbled upon the X-platform Music Multiplexing System 2, XMMS2.

XMMS2

XMMS2 is a client-server music platform which can be controlled via command line but also through a variety of other interfaces available on Linux, Windows as well as Mac. It allows you to play and manage your music collection on a local server or across the network. It is free, open-source and extensible with a growing number of plugins.

On my Ubuntu system, it was just a matter of seconds to install XMMS2. Ubuntu’s repositories already include everything you might need. I browsed the Synaptic package manager for…

• xmms2, the core application with server and command line client interface.
• xmms2-plugin-smb, a Samba transport extension I needed to get access to my music share.
• xmms2-scrobbler, used to submit data to Last.fm
• esperanza, a simple player, xmms2-client and graphical user interface
• xmms2-plugin-flac, to support the flac-format
• xmms2-plugin-mp4, to support the mp4-format

XMMS2′s command line interface is very easy to use thanks to its legible commands and parameters, just to mention a few:

• To start the server: xmms2-launcher
• To quit the server: xmms2 quit
• To add some music: xmms2 add /home/gerrit/Music/track.mp3
• To add a folder recursively: xmms2 radd /home/gerrit/Music/electronic/
• To add some music from my samba-share: xmms2 add smb://username:password@edmini/music/electronic/track.mp3
• To list the contents of the current playlist: xmms2 list
• To play: xmms2 play
• To stop playback: xmms2 stop

If the server is already running and you install new plugins, you may have to restart it before you can use the plugin. You can stop the server with xmms2 quit, or if that doesn’t work for some reason:

1. find the process-id with ps aux | grep xmms2d and
2. kill the process with sudo kill processid.

XMMS2 makes it easy to organize music in playlists:

• xmms2 playlist list lists all available playlists
• xmms2 playlist create myplaylistname creates a new playlist
• xmms2 playlist load myplaylistname loads an existing playlist
• xmms2 playlist active shows which playlist is currently active

With a separate set of media library commands you can also keep track of your artists, track and album titles, cover images, etc. To display a list of related commands: xmms2 mlib. To search for an artist: xmms2 mlib search artist:"Boards*". Standard wildcard characters like ‘*’ and ‘?’ are supported, too. It’s probably easier to use these mlib functions from an XMMS2 client software other than the command line. With a player like Esperanza you will find an easy-to-use graphical user interface for command line parameters.

To make the XMMS2 daemon reachable from other computers I added a tcp-socket to the configuration nano ~/.config/xmms2/xmms2.conf

unix:///tmp/xmms-ipc-gerrit;tcp://

More details on remote machines can be found in the FAQ. The default port is 9667. After restarting the xmms2d daemon I was ready to test my configuration from the other computer, a Windows system.

I installed the Windows built of XMMS2 and Esperanza which I found here, puzzle’s win32 folder. I had to make sure to use the version that matches the version of my server, in this example it was XMMS2-DrLecter.

I defined the following environment variable XMMS_PATH = tcp://192.168.1.43:9667 to let XMMS2 know where to find my music server.

The command-line version of XMMS2 works great on Windows, but I was still experiencing some problems with Esperanza (downloaded Esperanza-0.3.exe) which exited with a runtime error. Whenever I tried to launch Esperanza on Windows, the server responded with “Client ‘Esperanza’ with bad protocol version (1, not 11) connected”.

This looked like a similar conflict I experienced with the wrong XMMS2 version before, so I looked for another version. I found the DrLecter built Esperanza4-DrL.7z here. This version works great.

Now I was ready to play, stop, and control my XMMS2 daemon from my remote computers, may it run Windows or Ubuntu. However, this configuration didn’t actually stream music from my server to the remote machine. It only served as a channel to remote control the server’s playlist. The music was still played nowhere but on the server system.

Icecast2

Icecast2 is a streaming server, a package that will allow you to setup a simple Internet radio station. It, too, is readily available in Ubuntu’s repository and can be installed via Synaptic. After installation I updated two configuration files: sudo nano /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml

There I defined some passwords where the default was marked with ‘hackme‘. I also changed the ports to 9600/9601. No particular reason, other than having the Icecast2 ports relatively close to the XMMS2 default port. You can choose any port there. More details in the basic setup help. I left all the other settings alone and edited sudo nano /etc/default/icecast2 to set ENABLE=true. After that I could start Icecast2 with /etc/init.d/icecast2 start.

The Icecast admin-page should now show up with the url http://localhost:9600. But there still is no music to stream. In the next step I linked XMMS2 to Icecast, using the…

xmms2-plugin-ices

As part of the Ubuntu repository it was installed in a matter of a few seconds. It needed to be configured in the ices section of nano ~/.config/xmms2/xmms2.conf.

Make sure you stop the daemon before you make any changes, otherwise they might not be visible next time you restart. If you can’t find an ices section after a fresh installation, you can let XMMS2 and the plugin set a default section up for you. Try restarting the daemon. In the ices section I just set the password and portnumber (9600) to match what I defined for Icecast2 earlier. See also the XMMS2 wiki.

This didn’t want to work in the beginning. I received error messages about insufficient permissions. I think this was caused by the fact that XMMS2 and the plugin both ran as gerrit, Icecast2, however, as root. To solve this problem I copied the Icecast configuration (icecast.xml and admin, web-folders) to my home-folder, and changed the owner of all these files.

chown -hR gerrit ~/.icecast
sudo nano /etc/default/icecast2

Now I had to point the daemon to the new folder:

CONFIGFILE="/home/gerrit/.icecast/icecast.xml"

# Name or ID of the user and group the daemon should run under
USERID=gerrit
GROUPID=gerrit

Almost done. There still was a warning about the error- and access logfiles in /var/log/icecast2/. To solve this I had to change the owner of the log-files chown gerrit /var/log/icecast2/* and restart Icecast2 /etc/init.d/icecast2 start

Now I could set the output plugin to ices and start the playback with

xmms2 config output.plugin ices
xmms2 play

The radio stream is reachable with the following address for favorite media player: http://localhost:9600/stream.ogg.m3u, or http://192.168.1.43:9600/stream.ogg.m3u

Having turned the output to Icecast, you won’t be able to hear any music on the server, unless you open the stream. If you want to return to the standard sound output, use the following command:

xmms2 config output.plugin alsa

At this time, both output plugins can’t be activated together to hear music both on server and remote computer. You can only hear music if you connect to the Icecast server. The XMMS2 FAQ explains:

The possibility of multiple outputs involves a nontrivial solution. The biggest problem is keeping all of the outputs in sync with each other. Each output must pull audio data from a buffer following the last decoder or effect plugin in the xform chain at a rate determined by the samplerate of the underlying device. For example, streaming audio will have an exact bitrate since no actual audio hardware is used for obtaining audio data, but a soundcard’s samplerate may vary by a few Hertz with temperature, components, and voltage. We end up with an ever growing buffer (if the buffer holds data longer for slower outputs) or dropped samples (if the data is destroyed after the faster output has read it).

There are also smaller issues like that the xmms2 daemon takes into account the delays caused by the output plugin when showing the current playtime, but if there are multiple outputs these delays can vary. So one of them would have to be defined as a primary output to keep this feature in use.

Current plan to resolve the aforementioned problem with concurrent output and stream sourcing is to make it possible for effect plugins to keep a constant input format and stay alive through song changes. That way they can draw the data from the stream itself and it won’t have synchronizing problems because the whole chain is still simple and one-dimensional.

The current configuration works great now. I have a server that provides a stream of music. This stream is accessible from all other computers, and I am able to control this Internet radio stream using XMMS2 and Esperanza if needed, from any other computer running Linux or Windows.

At this point I could probably stop and let it be, but I want to integrate some web-services and social media tools. While I’m mostly just experimenting with a new range of Internet applications, I’m also interested in sharing my music favorites and creating some personal charts of my highlights, the most frequently played tracks, the most important artists, etc. A great tool to link my local music adventures to the web 2.0 world is last.fm.

Last.fm

To make my XMMS2/Icecast2 server talk with Last.fm I installed the xmms2-scrobbler plugin…as usual, from the standard Ubuntu repository. To configure this plugin I followed the instructions I found at sudosys.

The XMMS2 configuration is stored in ~/.config/xmms2, but the plugin tries to read it in ~/.xmms2. To work around this, I created a symlink ln -s ~/.config/xmms2 ~/.xmms2

Next, I created a new directory for the plugin configuration and created a config file with my credentials:

mkdir -p ~/.config/xmms2/clients/xmms2-scrobbler
nano ~/.config/xmms2/clients/xmms2-scrobbler/config

added

user: MY_LASTFM_USER
password: MY_LASTFM_PASS

I created another symlink for the actual xmms2-scrobbler script, so it gets executed when I launch XMMS2.

ln -s /usr/bin/xmms2-scrobbler ~/.config/xmms2/startup.d/

After restarting XMMS2 your music will show up on your last.fm profile.

Continuing from there you can expand your network by adding other services that access last.fm for your music statistics. On Facebook you can use a last.fm application to display your charts on your page or profile.

You can also integrate your last.fm data into your WordPress site with the LiveStream plugin. There is much more you can do, especially if you write your own applications, but this is how far my own configuration goes right now.

I hope you found any of these notes use- or helpful. As usual, please let me know if I forgot something or made a mistake somewhere. :]

Part 1…

Part 2…

Part 3…