After lots of trial and error each time I convert a video to WebM, I finally got around to posting this so I don’t forget next time. In a nutshell, here’s the conversion command that works for me: avconv -i myvideo.mp4 -acodec libvorbis -aq 5 -ac 2 -qmax 25 -threads 2 myvideo.webm What is this … Continue reading How to Convert Videos to WebM With FFmpeg/AVConv
“Web API” is a confusing term. It can refer to interfaces to be implemented by web software such as browsers, for example the W3C geolocation API, etc. It can also refer to how a web service exposes its data, and it’s in this context that Brian Mulloy has written what I hope will become the bible of REST-based … Continue reading Web API Design: A Definitive Guide
In playing with UPnP and JavaScript (now possible thanks to the Network Service Discovery API), I’ve been trying to grasp how UPnP works and what’s possible with it. The potential of the technology is exciting but there seems to be a lack of basic, easy-to-digest information. So here you go — a simple cheatsheet for the main … Continue reading UPnP Cheatsheet (and Brief Overview)
So you want Readability bookmarklets on your Android device, huh? Not so fast! At the time of writing, it’s not possible to access the official Readability bookmarklets on Android but there is a workaround. Here’s how to do it in three easy steps. Step 1: Copy the Readability script In Opera Mobile or Mini (I don’t think this works … Continue reading Readability for Android
After being asked for a bit of advice by a colleague, I decided to make a very simple starter template for creating an HTML5 page. You can download it here: Download HTML5 template Notes The tricky part is making sure it works in older browsers, for which I used the following two steps: 1. Normalize.css(Click on … Continue reading Free HTML5 Template
At last, the existence of vendor prefixes, one of my pet peeves, is under the spotlight. Also at last, the fact that not all modern browsers are WebKit (shock!) is getting some attention. I (personally) believe vendor prefixes cause more harm than the problem they were designed to solve, namely how to elegantly introduce experimental … Continue reading On Vendor Prefixes — An Interview With Dr. Stanley Dards
I’ve been buying LED bulbs but am surprised at their brightness, or rather lack of. Manufacturers often write the equivalent in watts of incandescent bulbs on the packet but it turns out they tend to, er, lie. Quite a lot. With the current boom in LED bulbs, a trustworthy comparison table is what’s needed. After … Continue reading Incandescent Bulbs and Lumens
I’m looking to make some pretty JavaScript charts and was wondering which library to use. I’ve used Flotr in an Opera extension and played around with gRaphaël in the past, but I want to do a more thorough comparison. First step is to list all the charting libraries I can find, so here it is… Open source … Continue reading List of Javascript Charting Libraries
I wanted to edit one of my geeky songs in PiTiVi and burn it to DVD. After searching around and trying a few things it seemed to work, so for reference, here’s how I did it. Important: Save the PiTiVi project before you start, as I’ve found it to be prone to crashing. Once the video and audio are ready, … Continue reading How to Create a DVD-Compatible Video in PiTiVi
Like many, I love my Kindle. What a wonderful piece of technology. OK, the browser’s a bit slow and not powered by Opera but even so, having a world-wide 3G connection is fantastic, as is the great reading experience. However, some PDFs don’t look so good on that small screen. Here are some (almost) ideal settings that … Continue reading How to Format PDFs for the Kindle
Daniemon's Blog 