So there we are, It's my last night in Tokyo and I've definitely got that Case feeling. Standing at my hotel window with a jar of sake, face lit up by the flashing neon outside. Behind me, the room has a cold glow under the light from my computer screen. Unfortunately, the laptop doesn't contain the Dixie Flatline but it's close enough.

I never did find a Chiba chop shop...

Those who know me will know that I have - using the parlance of the modern kids - mad skillz when it comes to video encoding and transcoding. I'll happily admit to wasting far too many hours learning the finer points of ffmpeg, mencoder and vlc, combining them with all manner of shell scripts, web interfaces, cron jobs and the like to set up my own mediacentre, video RSS feeds and shared video chatrooms (currently in maintenance mode).

So imagine my combination of frustration ("it should just work") and elation ("ooh, a challenge") when I discovered that my shiny new Mylo is extremely temperamental when it comes to video. I had assumed PSP-friendly video would have been fine but it turns out I was wrong. Any slight variation in frame-rate, bitrate, frame-size, aspect ratio, codec or container and I'd get a lovely "Sorry, the Mylo doesn't support this format" error (but in Japanese).

Anyway. In case you're interested, here's a shell script:

#!/bin/bash
ffmpeg -i "$1" -y -threads 2 -map 0.0:0.0 -f mp4 -vcodec xvid -b 768 -aspect 4:3 -s 320x240 -r ntsc -g 300 -me epzs -qmin 3 -qmax 9 -acodec aac -ab 64 -ar 24000 -ac 2 -map 0.1:0.1 -benchmark "$1.MP4"

call this from the command-line with the path to the file you want converted and 10 minutes later, your Mylo-ready file will be sitting next to the original.

I'm really only posting this here because in about 6 months, I'll have forgotten all about this and, given my current luck with technology, all my computers and all their backups will have simultaneously formatted themselves.

Okay, it's time to accept I have a coding problem. A sickness, an obsession, if you will.

I was sitting in my kitchen studying Japanese, my shiny new Sony Mylo sitting next to me. I was enjoying having the opportunity of having my computer switched off (seeing as I can just switch on skype on my Mylo). I found a word I didn't recognise in my notes. My paper dictionary was over the other side of the room. Surely there must be a way for me to look up this word easily...

This is the point at which you can spot the obsession. Any normal person would have opened up the mylo, launched the web browser and looked up the word online. Job done*. I, on the other hand, fired up my laptop, downloaded the reference documents and tech specs of the Mylo and spent two hours writing a Japanese-English dictionary widget for it. It's fully functional and translates between English, romaji Japanese and kana Japanese. I'll upload it here and on the official Sony Mylo Widget gallery once I've come up with a cool name and a shiny logo.

It's a sickness, I tell you, a sickness...

* [edit] In retrospect, a normal person would have just walked across the room to get the dictionary.

With Firefox releasing version 3.0.1 yesterday, I spent a chunk of last night trying to update the noodle extension. I decided it would probably be a good idea to enable automatic updates so keen users would be able to take advantage of the latest features immediately (or some such marketing gubbins).

Basic extension building itself is unnecessarily complicated in my opinion. For a start, XUL is an extremely clever and powerful tool but has abysmal documentation. I've now done two sizeable projects using it and I still don't have a clue how it works. Once you've got that bit sorted, however, you then need to package up your extension in a very particular way taking care not to forget updating all of the required versioning bits.

If you want to enable automatic updating, you now need to digitally sign it. Not a bad idea, really. It just makes the whole process even more complicated.

My process roughly goes as follows:

• Update Extension


• Update install.rdf with the new version number


• On the terminal, run './build.sh' (automatic shell script to package, zip, remove hidden files, copy, paste, resequence, etc)


• Upload noodle.xpi to this server


• On the terminal, run 'md5 noodle.xpi' (to calculate one of the application hashes)


• copy key to noodle extension post for in-browser installation


• update update.rdf with the new version number


• run 'openssl sha1 noodle.xpi' to generate another application hash)


• update update.rdf with new update hash


• resign update.rdf with McCoy (embeds another application hash)


• upload update.rdf to server


• cross fingers

This process is somewhat more complicated the first time you do it as you also have to use McCoy to digitally sign the install.rdf before you build your extension. McCoy itself is also password-protected.

In total, you have 1 password to run McCoy, 1 extension signature, 1 md5 hash to allow in-browser installation, 1 sha1 hash to allow add-ons menu automatic updating and 1 signed update.rdf. I'm sure I've missed one.

...in several easy steps.

1: Have a too-clever-for-its-own-good CMS that is child-like in its simplicity yet Canadian-lumber-forest-like in its ability to be hacked.
2: Build several different websites using said CMS, each with their own unique hacks.
3: Have all the sites open in your FTP client and in your text editor
4: Play an episode of Firefly in the background to distrct you.

Now, the next few steps must be done in very quick succession:

5: Upload files from site A to site B
6: Realise mistake, download replacements from site C
7: Upload replacements to site D
8: Realise mistake, reset Subversion backup C
9: Upload site C to site A
10: Watch River Tam kick ass
11: Realise you're getting confused, delete everything and start again
12: Delete Subversion backup B
13: Delete entire project B

Now that you've done that, all that's left is to put everything back the way it was on A, C and D and trawl old backup disks and Google cached pages to try and get B back.

14: Watch Mal shoot someone.
15: Write it up in a post on the freshly-restored, looks-like-it-was-never-broken site B.

Fairly straightforward, really.

Regular readers will, of course, remember my previous experiences with my Japanese barber. Well, I started to look like some kind of scruffy hippie again so I braved the rain, grabbed the infamous umbrella and headed out for another haircut. This time, I decided to go the whole hog and find out what the full shave-and-a-haircut experience was like.

He shaved my forehead.

My forehead! Shaved! With a cut-throat razor! Exclamation mark!11One!Factorial

I was so busy being shocked that I only just noticed he followed it by shaving my earlobes. I'm now hairless in places that have had hair since before I was born.

I don't really have any conclusion to take from it other than - He Shaved My Forehead...

You can either download the Noodle Firefox extension from the Mozilla Addons Site (recommended but requires registration) or below.

Noodle Firefox extension [1.0.5].

If you download from the Mozilla site, you can leave a review and increase the chance it'll get accepted into the public area (no registration required).

It has been tested with Firefox 2 and 3. Surprisingly, it also works fine with both of them, too.

I've removed the comment form from below each post here and replaced it with a Noodle button. I figured there's no sense in making a website devoted to instant commenting if I'm not going to use it myself.

This does coincide with the evil evil spambots cracking my (previously thought to be impregnable) anti-spam system earlier this week but it isn't related. Honest. Darned spam. So it may not have been impregnable but it had a fairly decent run. It lasted seven months and several tens of thousands of attempts to bypass it. Oh well.

At least Noodle uses Google Accounts. If spam starts to come through on it, I'll just remove the ability to post anonymously so everyone will need a google account. I'd rather not do that unless I really have to, though.

I think my latest little project is pretty much done. It still doesn't work absolutely perfectly in Internet Explorer 6 but I figure I'll fix that if enough people ask me to.

So, here it is: Noodle.

"Okay, what is it?", I hear you ask (I don't but play along). Noodle is a variation on a good old-fashioned forum except that every page on the internet has its own thread. Any time you're looking at something, you just press a button and you get to see the discussion for that page. Sometimes a page won't have any comments on it for months (or ever, even), sometimes a page will be extremely busy.

The pages that are currently the most popular will appear on the Noodle homepage (it's set to show the top 10 at the moment but I might change that) along with the most recent comments.

"So, where's this magic button?" you ask (you're full of questions today, aren't you?). It's here:

If you're using Firefox with the bookmarks bar switched on or Opera with the status bar switched on, you can just grab the button, yank it off the page and drag it to your bar. If you're using Internet Explorer 6 or 7, right-click and 'Add to Favourites'. Bear in mind that IE6 is...flaky at times.

Known issues

The google account login screen is cut off at the top.

The google logout screen gives a nastly looking error. This is a problem at google's end. Apparently, you don't get this error in the USA but you do in the UK and Japan.

Nicknames are cut short. After my earlier musings, I decided the safest way to display nicknames (until google fix it) is just to trim bits out. If anyone has a better RegEx for doing this than the one I'm using, let me know.

I'm sure I'll post more about this soon, I'm now off to bang my head against IE for a while.

Yes, I do need better hobbies.

A quick transcript of the conversation I had with my barber just as I was about to leave:

Barber: Do you have an umbrella?
Me: No, is it raining? (look outside, it's not)
Barber: Ah, wait a second
Barber runs off through the back, comes back with an umbrella.
Barber: Please, take this.
Me: But it's not raining.
Barber: Ah, but it might.
Me: No, really, it's okay, I live just round the corner.
Barber: (looking sad) Please? You don't even need to bring it back.

I took the umbrella. He also gave me a hairbrush.

My latest pointless programming project is just about finished. There's just one little bit left to figure out and then it's done.

I'm building this using the new Google AppEngine system (mostly because I needed an excuse to learn python) but there seems to be a bit of a problem with the User object. They haven't finished the User nickname bit yet so when you sign into an AppEngine application or site using a standard Google Account, it uses the bit of your e-mail address that comes before the '@' and, although Google accounts can use any e-mail address, the majority of them will be gmail.com or googlemail.com. This means that if you want to make any kind of public forum, you have to do one of the following:

• Implement your own nickname system (not really in the spirit of a unified User object)


• Obfuscate the nickname before displaying


• Display the nickname and open users up to spam or other unwanted e-mail

None of these are particularly great. If it were even possible to access the user's first name, that'd solve the problem but, until the nickname functionality is finished, it's not as useful as it could be.

As an aside, doing a project in python means that I've written code in pretty much every mainstream (i.e. not esoteric) programming language except COBOL.

Here's an updated version of my Ramen Millionaire story. Honestly, I'm going to write an english version soon...

ラーメン長者

むかしばなしじゃない。さいきん、渋谷にうんのわるい男が住んでいました。毎日、朝から晩まで　まじめに働きましたけどなかなか金持ちになりませんでした。ある日、おなかがぺこぺこだから、ラーメンやたいにいきました。食べながらラーメンやたいの人と話していました。

「どうしてなかなか金持ちにならない？何をするればいんだろう？」と言いました。

「ここから出る時に、ころびます。こたいをみつけます。」とおかしく言いました。

「えええ。。。？彼はあたまがへん。。。」と思っていました。そしてらラーメンやたいを出ました。

「がんばって」らラーメンやたいの人大きい声で言いました。

ふりかえったら男がころびました。しかし、立つ前にやたいの下におもしろい物をみつけました。小さいドラエモンのケータイのストラップでした。立ってからラーメンやたいの人に「ああ。。。かわいい物、ね。。。」と言ったけど彼はいませんでした。

「ええ。。。どこ？」と言いました「じゃ。。。」

それから道を歩き出しました。「よく考えなくちゃ。。。」と思っていました「たぶん。。。ああ！うるさい！なんか？」

お母さんと赤ちゃんが店を出ました。赤ちゃんがうるさくないていました。

「あああ。。。かわいい、ね」

とつぜん思い出したーストラップ！

「えーんえーん！」赤ちゃんと大声でないていました。

男は赤ちゃんにドラエモンのスストラップをあげました。赤ちゃんはすぐに静かになりました。

お母さんは「どうもありがとう」と言いました。「赤ちゃんがよろこんだんからお礼がしたいんです」。ハンドバッグの中をさがしてペットボトルを取り出した　「あ！ウロン茶どうぞ」お母さんからウロン茶をもらいました。

男は歩きつづけました。まもなく、女の人と合いました。顔色がよくありません。

「スポーツクラブ。。。から。。。つかれった。。。のど。。。かわく。。。」と言いました。

男がお茶をあげまてから女の人が飲み出した。

「あああ。どうもありがとうございます。体がよくなりました。ああ！明日、KAT-TUNのコンサートがあります。時間がないので、行くことができません。」

男は女の人にチケットをもらいました。

男は歩きつづけました。まもなく、サラリマンを見ました。サラリマンの車が壊れました。彼は車をけりつけていました。

男は「どうしたの？」と言いました。

サラリマンは「分かりません。動かない。。。」と言いました。「むすめにKAT-TUNのチケットを買ってあげたかったけど店がしまっちゃいました。。。」

男は「どうぞ」と言ってチケットをあげました。

サラリマンはよろこびました。車のかぎをあげました。

「どうもありがとう。車はあなたの。。。」と言って家に走って帰りました。

男は車の中を見ました。小さいワイアが切れていました。男は繕いました。簡単でした。

車のとなりにたっていたらおじいさんが来ました。

「ああっ！さいこう！」と言いました。

おじいさんは有名な映画のディレクターでした。

「古いしおもしろいし僕の新しい映画のシーンで車はパフェクトです」。

「いっしょうに行こう！」と言いました。

男とディレクターさんはさつえい場所にいったら女の人が来ました。

ディレクターさんは「こちらは娘です。映画のしゅやくです。もうすぐ、有名じょゆうになります。」

彼女はスポーツクラブの女の人です！

アシスタントディレクターがディレクターのところに来て静かに耳打ちしました。

ディレクターさんは男に「映画のしゅやくが止めたであなたはこの映画の新しいしゅやく。」と言いました。

後で映画はとても人気になりました。男とディレクターの娘さんも人気になってけっこんしてうれしくなって億万長者になりました。

皆が幸せになりました。

I've just realised what's so odd about being back in Edinburgh. It feels exactly like I've just come back from an adventure in Narnia. I left normality behind 6 months ago and travelled to a magical, mystical land full of everything I could possibly dream of (mostly really cool geek stuff) where everybody spoke strangely. I stayed just long enough for everything to become normal, where I'd come to expect onigiri to be sold in every corner shop then I travelled back and stepped into life exactly where I left. Everything and everyone exactly the same as it was when I left. That's what's weird about it.

Still, I'll be clambering back into the wardrobe next week now that I've got my new visa.

In other news, I highly recommend Heima by Sigur Rós

For my japanese lessons, I've been writing short little essays recently. Usually it's opinions on the weather or plans for the weekend but last week I went a bit mad and rewrote the traditional japanese story "Warashibe Chouja" or "Straw Millionaire" in a modern setting.

My current version is below but I'll probably update/rewrite it as I continue my studies. I'll also get round to typing up the english translation. Apologies to anyone reading on a PC, you'll probably just see a load of boxes...

ラーメン長者
むかしばなしじゃない。さいきん、渋谷にうんのわるい男が住んでいました。毎日、朝から晩まで　まじめに働きましたけどなかなか金持ちになりませんでした。ある日、おなかがぺこぺこだから、ラーメンやたいにいきました。食べながらラーメンやたいの人と話していました。
「どうしてなかなか金持ちにならない？何をするんの？」と言いました。
「ここから出る時に、ころびます。こたいをみつけます。」とおかしく言いました。
「えええ。。。？彼はあたまがへん。。。」と思っていました。そしてらラーメンやたいを出ました。
「がんばって」らラーメンやたいの人とどなていました。
ふりかえって男がころびました。しかし、立つ前にやたいの下におもしろい物をみました。小さいドラエモンのケータイのストラップでした。立ってからラーメンやたいの人に「ああ。。。かわいい物、ね。。。」と言ったけど彼はいませんでした。
「ええ。。。どこ？」と言いました「じゃ。。。」

道を歩きました。「よく考えなくちゃ。。。」と思っていました「たぶん。。。ああ！うるさい！なんか？」
お母さんと赤ちゃんが店を出ました。赤ちゃんがうるさくないていました。
「あああ。。。かわいい、ね」
とつぜん思い出したーストラップ！
「わああああああ！」赤ちゃんと大声ないていました。
男は赤ちゃんにドラエモンのスストラップをあげました。赤ちゃんはすぐに静かになりました。
お母さんは「どうもありがとう」と言いました。「赤ちゃんがよろこぶしてからお礼がしたいんです」。手かばんの中にさがしてペットボテルを取り出した　「あ！ウロン茶どうぞ」お母さんからウロン茶をもらいました。

男が歩きつづけました。まもなく、女の人と合いました。顔色がよくありません。
「スポーツクラブ。。。から。。。つかれった。。。のど。。。かわく。。。」と言いました。
男が茶をあげまてから女の人が飲み出した。
「あああ。どうもありがとうございます。体がよくなりました。ああ！明日、KAT-TUNのコンサートがあります。時間がないので、行くことができません。」
男は女の人にチケットをもらいました。

男が歩きつづけました。まもなく、サラリマンを見ました。サラリマンの車が壊れました。彼は車をけりつけていました。

男は「どしたの？」と言いました。
サラリマンは「分かりません。動かない。。。」と言いました。「むすめにKAT-TUNのチケットを買ってあげたかったけど店は閉店しました。。。」
男は「どうぞ」と言ってチケットをあげました。
サラリマンはよろこびました。車のかぎをあげあした。
「どうもありがとう。車があなたの。。。」と言って家に走りました。
男は車の中を見ました。小さいワイアが切れていました。男は繕いました。簡単でした。

車のとなりにたっておじいさんが来ました。
「ああっ！さいこう！」と言いました。
おじいさんは有名な映画のディレクターでした。
「古いしおもしろいし僕の新しい映画のシーンで車はパフェクトです」。
「いっしょうに行こう！」と言いました。
男とディレクターさんは映画の場所にいったら女の人が来ました。
ディレクターさんは「こちらは娘です。映画の大切の人です。まもなく、有名じょゆうになります。」
彼女はスポーツクラブの女の人です！

アシスタントディレクターがディレクターに来て静かに耳打ちにしました。
ディレクターさんは男に「映画のしゅやくが止めた。あなたは僕の新しいしゅやく。」と言いました。

後で映画はとても人気になりました。男とディレクターの娘さんも人気になってけっこんしてうれしくなって長者になりました。

皆が幸せになりました。

I've obviously been reading and writing far too much code recently. I find myself mentally adding markup to my normal conversations. When I say something like "Despite having a sore back, I managed to vacuum the flat.", I mentally wrap an href round "Despite having a sore back", linking it to a previous conversation (usually with someone completely different) so that the interested listener can open that conversation in a background tab and check it out later...

As long as I don't start carrying around a small yellow sign saying 'Digg this', I'll probably recover...

Because I've been doing lots of development work lately, I've had to spend more time than I'd like in various techie forums trying to find answers to various programming issues. I tend not to hang around forums when I don't need to because I largely find them depressingly full of people like me.

Even though these are technical forums for technically-minded people, there are still too many demonstrations of fuzzy thinking, lots of "Does anyone know how to package xulrunner for OS X", "Has anyone managed to install VLC on an iPhone", "Can anyone make the whatsit do the thing?". Keeping with the free and open sharing of ideas and nurturing of curiosity that The Internet is supposed to encourage, I've created two handy pages with the answer to all these questions.

For all those times someone asks a question like "Does anyone know how to...":

• The Answer


• The Other Answer

To be used in the same frame of mind as this handy tool.

No real surprises there, I just needed to point out that it's now five past one and I started installing IE7 just under 3 hours ago. Three. Hours.

I needed to test some layouts on IE7, I don't trust IE7 enough to not mess up my parallels install so I decided to put it on my development machine in the office in edinburgh via VNC, ran windows update... wait... security updates... wait... restart... windows update... IE7. Yes, install, please. Installing... wait... restart... run IE7.

"Do you want to run the Phishing filter?"
No.

"Welcome to IE7. Do you want to run the Phishing Filter?"
No.

"Ah, you've opened a new tab. Do you want to run the Phishing Filter?"
No.

I go to the site I wanted to test. True enough, it's gebroken.

Click "Developer toolbar".

Crash... wait... restart... run IE7.

Re-download the Developer Toolbar.

"Do you want to run this?"
Yes.

"Finished downloading. Do you want to run this?"
Yes.

"This program may be unsafe. Do you want run this?"
Dear god, if this computer wasn't in a different hemisphere, I'd lamp it one right now.

Run the installer, fail.

Shut down IE7, run the installer again.

Run IE7.

Go to the site again.

"This site may be unsafe, do you want to run the Phishing Filter?"

Log out of VNC. Step away from the computer, spend 10 minutes ranting to nobody in particular. Feel somewhat better.