Posts Tagged ‘piece’
Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 UNetbootin is a nice easy to use Free Software Universal mutli OS program that makes creation of Bootable USB Stick Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and other free operating systems a piece of cake
UNetbootin support the three major operating system architectures Windows, Mac OS X and GNU / Linux .
In Debian and Ubuntu based distributions Unetbootin is available as a deb binary package:
debian:~$ dpkg -l |grep -i 'usb' |grep -i 'install'
ii unetbootin 471-2
installer of Linux/BSD distributions to a partition or USB drive
To install it with apt:
debian:~# apt-get install unetbootin
...
debian:~# unetbootin
Alternatively for all those who prefer to run it via the GNOME Application menu follow to the menu path:
Applications -> System Tools -> Unetbootin
If the program is launched with non privileged account (like via GNOME Application menu), in order to to properly tamper with any connected USB Flash drive you will be asked about the super user password.
The shipped uniboot version in current Debian stable version Squeeze is 471-2 is a bit outdated. For everyone eager to use the latest version which as of time of writting is 565 check out UnetBootin’s Official Homepage on SourceForge
Installing the distributed binary of unetbootin downloadable from its website is a trivial one. Simply download the file from the Download (for Linux) link and run the binary unetbootin-linux-565:
debian:~$ ./unetbootin-linux-565
There is one annoying thing about the latest downloadable (static compiled) unetbootin version, it was built to run using KDE’s QT library and therefore the interface that poped up while trying it was KDE like, pitily did not take advantage of my native GNOME GTK2 library :
Though this little note, unetbootin developers has done a truly great job! I tried unetbootin and was more than pleasently surprised that it prepares bootable USB sticks with only 4 mouse clicks!!! 😉
The program worked out of the box without any external or additional hacks like many of the programs I daily use it just worked 😉
UNetbootin has a thoroughful list of Free Software operating system distributions in the distributions list. Many of the offered Open Source & Free Software distributions has even possibility of installing a multiple versions of the respective distro.
Here is a complete list of all the Free & Open Source Operating Systems, unetbootin program can burn and make bootable on USB stick.
- 1. Ubuntu
- 2. Debian
- 3. Fedora
- 4. PCLinuxOS
- 5. Linux Mint
- 6. Sabayon Linux
- 7. Gentoo
- 8. OpenSUSE
- 9. MEPIS
- 10. Zenwalk
- 11. Arch Linux
- 12. Slax
- 13. Dream Linux
- 14. Damn Small Linux
- 15. SliTaz
- 16. Elive
- 17. CentOS
- 18. Puppy Linux
- 19. Mandriva
- 20. FreeBSD
- 21. LinuxConsole
- 22. Frugalware Linux
- 23. NetBSD
- 24. xPUD
- 25. gNewSense
- 26. GeeXboX
- 27. Gujin
- 28. Kaspersky Rescue Disc
- 29. NimbleX
- 30. Sabayon Linux
- 31. Puppy Linux
- 32. Mandriva
- 33. SuperOS
- 34. Xubuntu
- 35. Parted Magic
- 36. Super Grub Disk
- 37. Smart Boot Manager
- 38. 0phcrack
- 40. FreeNAS
- 41. NetBootCD
- 42. FreeDOS
- 43. Dr. Web Antivirus
- 44. CloneZilla
- 45. Kubutun
- 46. BackTrack
To burn and make bootable on the USB flash drive any of the listed distributions, choose the distribution name and version number as well as the Drive: (which usually will be selected by default to the first sticked USB drive let’s say /dev/sdb1).
Afterwards press on the OK button and that’s it, lay down your back and wait until the distribution is downloaded from the Internet, burned into the USB pendrive and made bootable.
I’ve tested Unetbootin with two distributions;
1. Xubuntu 10_04_live and;
2. Fedora 13
Both of the distributions got burned properly to the USB drive usng the CD images and booted fine on a Packard Bell notebook on.
Having an USB drive with LiveCD GNU / Linux or BSD everywhere with you is hand and is a sort of substitute to the old linux boot floopy disk of Tomsrtbt linux distribution, I used to keep everywhere with me . Now I can move to any PC installed with Windows and use my preferred Free Software OS using an USB Stick.
Besides that, there are laptops whose CD-ROM / DVD-ROM drive is broken and therefore if one wants to re-install an improperly working Windows XP / Vista / 7 and substitute with Free operating system this task is only possible using USB Flash Disk or NetBoot Install.
Installing using USB has its advantageous as you don’t depend on the network as well as the installation from USB is in most of the cases few times faster.
There are plenty of other USB Linux installer programs, most of them however are only available with a Windows version.
Here are few prgrams which can be used to burn a number of Linux and *BSD installations using Microsoft Windows to create Linux / BSD liveUSB:
- Universal USB Installer – http://live.learnfree.eu/download
- YUMI – Your Universal Multiboot Installer – http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/
- xBOOT – http://sites.google.com/site/shamurxboot/
I was happy to find out ’bout the existence of Universal USB Installer (this proggie written in Python) is made by a Bulgarian mate! Proud to be Bulgarian 😉 Universal USB Installer is actually multiplatform since written in Python and therefore can be used to burn a LiveUSB on GNU / Linux and (possibly on FreeBSD?)I would be glad to get feedback from other people who had experience with programs to prepare LiveUSB bootable sticks on Free Software OSes. Does anybody tried that on who *BSDs? Cheers 😉
Tags: annoying thing, application menu, binary package, BSD, bsd distributions, cake, debian gnu, Disk, distribution, dpkg, drive, drive memory, Free, free operating systems, Gnome, gnome application, gnu linux, liveUSB, mac os x, menu, menu path, nbsp, NetBSD, number, Open, os program, package, package debian, partition, password, piece, privileged account, qt library, software, sourceforge, stable version, substitute, support, system architectures, Ubuntu, UnetbootinIf, uniboot, Universal, usb flash drive
Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video, System Administration, Various | 2 Comments »
Monday, October 3rd, 2011 Gcompris is a great piece of software to educate children in the age interval of 2 to 10 years old.
Gcompris is a tool of educative and funny interactive computer applications many of which has a form of games.
Gcompris is teaching the children on the following fields of knowledge:
- understand the computer – keyboard, mouse etc.
- Algebra – Summing up numbers, enumarations, table memory, mirror image etc.
- Science – The Canal lock, the water cycle, how a submarine works, elementary electric simulation
- Geography – Find out about country locations, Place the country on the map
- Games – Learn how to play chess, improve memory and memorization, sudoku etc.
- Reading – Learning to read fluent, reading practice
- Learn to proerply tell time, solve puzzle games and learn famous paintings, basic cartoon making, vector drawing
All the funny activities Gcompris educative kid tool offers 100+. Gcompris is in active development so with time more and more activities gets added.
Gcompris is a Free Software and among with its native GNU / Linux support it has ports for Windows and Mac OS X
The Free Software nature of Gcompris gives possibility to be easily adapted and further developed! Its really funny not only for kids, but even for adults. If you had a stressy day and you want to relax in a childish way and feel like a kid again, give it a try and you will be amazed how much light and happiness this computer program can bless you with 😉
Many of Gcompris activities has a little cute penguins and in general its capable of introducing the kids to the nice concept of the free software.
As a free software Gcompris is really great as among the rest of the so popular free software freedoms: to distribute and modify the software it comes absolutely free of charge (in money terms). This is great news for parents who are growing their kids in the “developing world”, the so called 2nd and 3rd world as well is a good alternative to the many available paid costly application and games aiming at kids brain development.
The name Gcompris is also known in free software realm under the name I GOT IT .Gcompris has currently Sound and text support for 33 Country Languages, here is a completele list of languages currently supported:
Arabic, Asturian, Bulgarian, Breton, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Basque, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Indian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Indian, Norwegian, Dutch, Norwegian, Punjabi, Portuguese, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Urdu, Chinese
Some of the languages supported still does not have a 100% translation but partially translated as its a question of time that enough translators are found to make the translations for all available major languages. The only 100% completed trasnlation as of time of writting is in French, Slovenian and Spanish
Gcompris is already included in almost all available moderm GNU / Linux distributions. A packaged version of it is part of Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu.
For all those parents who wish to educate their children on Fedora Linux install it with the GUI installer or yum with cmd:
[root@fedora ~]# yum install gcompris
...
On Debian and Ubuntu Gcompris is installable via apt from repos:
debian:~# apt-get install gcompris
...
To add a text and sound translation to Gcompris its also necessery to install the relevant gcompris-sound distribution package, for example to add the sound translations for my native Bulgarian language I had to install the package gcompris-sound-bg, e.g.:
debian:~# apt-get install gcompris-sound-bg
...
Gcompris is developed to use the Gnome’s GTK and is a perfect match for Linux users who already run a Gnome Desktop on their PCs.
Most of Gcompris versions should run without much hassle on Mac OS X and Windows so all mommies and daddies on Windows or Mac can install it and use it to educate their kids 😉
Here are few more screenshots of Gcompris
Gcompris also fits well with Tux for Kids Linux / Windows ready games also suitable for kids development. Gcompris and Tux for Kids makes Linux and free software more “children mature” and is a perfect to be used on kids educational computers in kindergartens or any educational institutions aiming at children development.
To sum it up, if you want to make your children smarter or you’re bored to death and you need to have some rest by going back to your childhood years give gcompris a try 😉
Tags: active development, age, canal lock, cartoon, computer keyboard, cycle, developing world, famous paintings, Free, gcompris, Gnome, gnu linux, how to play chess, intellect, interactive computer applications, keyboard mouse, kid, Learn, linux support, linux windows, mac os x, memorization, mirror image, money terms, nbsp, package, piece, puzzle games, quality educational software, quot, reading, reading practice, software, software nature, Sound, submarine, support, text, time, tool, Ubuntu, water cycle
Posted in Entertainment, Games Linux, Linux, Various, Windows | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, September 27th, 2011 Sjecas li se dolly is a piece of classic in the well known Kosturica genre, the movie is from the distant 1981. The movie action takes place in communistic Yugoslavia. It clearly contains anti-communistic nuances. I’m really amazed that this movie see the light of the day in the early ’90s while still communism had strong influence on information media in Yugoslavia.
As I’ve lived until the age of 7 in communism and post-communism (and experienced myself communism), the movie was especially interesting to see. In the family in the movie I can see many things I’ve seen and suffered many of the anti-human communistic bull-shit in my own family in my boy years.
Communism has cripppled us the Bulgarians as a nation and destroyed any society which it was in (clearly observable in all post-communistic countries).
Interesting thing to notice among the communistic Marxist ideas in the plot is the growing influence of the Western World (seen in the anti social behavior of the actors),the enthusiasm to look for occult of the main actor the teenager boy – (Dino), the desire to look follow Italian western culture etc.
The movie also keeps the mark of the negativism and crazyness which is so distinct about all Kosturica movies I’ve seen. Anyways from an art point of view the movie is a real master piece.
The movie plot takes place in the so conflict area of Sarajevo, a place predominated by Muslims. What is shocking about the movie considering its time of make, is the explicit erotic and sexually related scenes. The censorship in communistic times was quite severe so it’s amazing, how this anti-communistic movie containing society unacceptable scenes ever came to existence.
Do you remember Dolly Bell? is a drama movie, presenting a sad reality, we still partially continue to live in the Balkans. Though 20 years has passed since the fall of communism pitily not much has changed here…
Near the movie end there are some religious scenes as well obviously attempting to fill in the material emptiness of communism with something spiritual. The religious scene,is a muslim local tradition of a funeral preparations.
The relation between the movie and Islam is understandable as Kosturica had some Bosnian Muslim roots from the line of his father. This kind of muslim influence is also observable on the other Kosturica movies as well.
Nowdays since 2005, Kosturica is officially Orthodox Christian baptized in Savina Monastery which makes me happy as myself am Orthodox Christian 😉
Tags: action, action takes place, actor, age, anti, art point, balkans, Bosnian, bulgarians, bull shit, censorship, communistic countries, crazyness, dolly bell, drama, existence, fall of communism, family, genre, information, information media, Islam, kosturica, Light, main actor, marxist ideas, negativism, nuances, piece, piti, place, sad reality, Sjecas, social behavior, something, spiritual, teenager, teenager boy, time, western culture
Posted in Entertainment, Everyday Life, Movie Reviews | No Comments »
Monday, August 15th, 2011 Few days ago, I’ve catch some Spammers on some of the servers running Windows inside Virtual Private Servers.
I was doubting if I want to write an article to mention about this 3 piece of software as it might be a bit boury however eventually I thought the goods of it will be better so I just took minutes and wrote it.
Back to the topic the three programs which the spammer was installed and prepare to do his spamming job on the VPS server was:
1. Xtractor Extreme
2. Power Email Harvester
3. Advanced Mass Sender
In order to hide his real IP address and prevent the IP he was spamming, he has also installed some anonyous proxy like Windows software called Hide My IP
The first program Xtractor is basicly an Email collector, the program crawls the net and searches to match email string on web pages.
It get target websites from major search engines.
You put an email like @gmail.com inside it and it starts spidering and grabs all email strings under the domain @gmail.com. Besides that Xtractor Extreme Pro is freeware and can be easily downloaded from many locations online.
Power Email Harvester‘s program name is also quite self-explanatory, what it does is it digs the net for email addresses and generates spam lists … This is the ultimate tool for a spammer, however the guys who create this piece of disruptive software has branded it as “a marketing tool” and even sold and advertised as a tool to help an e-marketing campaign.
This is of course just a word play and in fact in my viewe these program should be prohibited by international law.
Advanced Mass Sender is another piece of Spammer software which officially is tagged as marketing software and is sold and recommended as an useful tool for e-marketing.
I’ve take the time to take a quick and test the spammer installed AMS , honestly I’ve been amazed how far spamming has went during the last 5 years.
This AMS shit is capable of creating a target groups which could easily be spammed whether each group can contain up to 200000+ ! target emails
Advanced Mass Sender can even check if a certain email is present on the remote mail server and only then tries to deliver.
Besides that it even supports sending the spam mails via multiple mail servers (simultaneously) to increase the thoroughput as well as supports proxy servers…
I decided to write this few lines article to raise some awareness about this shitty sofware in a hope that somebody who is Administrating / Supporting client owned Windows servers or Virtual Private Servers will be able to read about this 3 ones and stop spammers before they succeed to create mail havoc with their ugly spam stuff.
Tags: AMS, awareness, com, course, email addresses, email collector, extreme power, freeware, Gmail, grabs, Harvester, IPThe, job, major search engines, marketing campaign, marketing software, marketing tool, piece, power, power email harvester, Search, software, spammer, Spammers, spidering, targe, target websites, three windows, time, tool, topic, Virtual, virtual private servers, VPS, windows programs, windows software, word play
Posted in Computer Security, Everyday Life, System Administration | 1 Comment »
Friday, August 12th, 2011 I’m responsible for some GNU/Linux servers which are shared hosting and therefore contain plenty of user accounts.
Every now and then our company servers gets suspended because of a Phishing websites, Spammers script kiddies and all the kind of abusers one can think of.
To mitigate the impact of the server existing unwanted users activities, I decided to use the Clamav Antivirus – open source virus scanner to look up for potentially dangerous files, stored Viruses, Spammer mailer scripts, kernel exploits etc.
The Hosting servers are running latest CentOS 5.5. Linux and fortunately CentOS is equipped with an RPM pre-packaged latest Clamav release which of the time of writting is ver. (0.97.2).
Installing Clamav on CentOS is a piece of cake and it comes to issuing:
[root@centos:/root]# yum -y install clamav
...
After the install is completed, I’ve used freshclam to update clamav virus definitions
[root@centos:/root]# freshclam
ClamAV update process started at Fri Aug 12 13:19:32 2011
main.cvd is up to date (version: 53, sigs: 846214, f-level: 53, builder: sven)
WARNING: getfile: daily-13357.cdiff not found on remote server (IP: 81.91.100.173)
WARNING: getpatch: Can't download daily-13357.cdiff from db.gb.clamav.net
WARNING: getfile: daily-13357.cdiff not found on remote server (IP: 163.1.3.8)
WARNING: getpatch: Can't download daily-13357.cdiff from db.gb.clamav.net
WARNING: getfile: daily-13357.cdiff not found on remote server (IP: 193.1.193.64)
WARNING: getpatch: Can't download daily-13357.cdiff from db.gb.clamav.net
WARNING: Incremental update failed, trying to download daily.cvd
Downloading daily.cvd [100%]
daily.cvd updated (version: 13431, sigs: 173670, f-level: 60, builder: arnaud)
Downloading bytecode.cvd [100%]
bytecode.cvd updated (version: 144, sigs: 41, f-level: 60, builder: edwin)
Database updated (1019925 signatures) from db.gb.clamav.net (IP: 217.135.32.99)
In my case the shared hosting hosted websites and FTP user files are stored in /home directory thus I further used clamscan in the following way to check report and log into file the scan results for our company hosted user content.
[root@centos:/root]# screen clamscan -r -i --heuristic-scan-precedence=yes --phishing-scan-urls=yes --phishing-cloak=yes --phishing-ssl=yes --scan-archive=no /home/ -l /var/log/clamscan.log
home/user1/mail/new/1313103706.H805502P12513.hosting,S=14295: Heuristics.Phishing.Email.SpoofedDomain FOUND/home/user1/mail/new/1313111001.H714629P29084.hosting,S=14260: Heuristics.Phishing.Email.SpoofedDomain FOUND/home/user1/mail/new/1305115464.H192447P14802.hosting,S=22663: Heuristics.Phishing.Email.SpoofedDomain FOUND/home/user1/mail/new/1311076363.H967421P17372.hosting,S=13114: Heuristics.Phishing.Email.SpoofedDomain FOUND/home/user1/mail/domain.com/infos/cur/859.hosting,S=8283:2,S: Heuristics.Phishing.Email.SSL-Spoof FOUND/home/user1/mail/domain.com/infos/cur/131.hosting,S=6935:2,S: Heuristics.Phishing.Email.SSL-Spoof FOUND
I prefer running the clamscan in a screen session, because it’s handier, if for example my ssh connection dies the screen session will preserve the clamscan cmd execution and I can attach later on to see how scan went.
clamscan of course is slower as it does not use Clamav antivirus daemon clamd , however I prefer running it without running the daemon, as having a permanently running clamd on the servers sometimes creates problems or hangs and it’s not really worthy to have it running since I’m intending to do a clamscan no more than once per month to see some potential users which might need to be suspended.
Also later on, after it finishes all possible problems are logged to /var/log/clamscan.log , so I can read the file report any time.
A good idea might also be to implement the above clamscan to be conducted, once per month via a cron job, though I’m still in doubt if it’s better to run it manually once per month to search for the malicious users content or it’s better to run it via cron schedule.
One possible pitfall with automating the above clamscan /home virus check up, might be the increased load it puts to the system. In some cases the Webserver and SQL server might be under a heavy load at the exactly same time the clamscan cron work is running, this might possible create severe issues for users websites, if it’s not monitored.
Thus I would probably go with running above clamscan manually each month and monitor the server performance.
However for people, who have “iron” system hardware and clamscan file scan is less likely to cause any issues, probably a cronjob would be fine. Here is sample cron job to run clamscan:
10 05 01 * * clamscan -r -i --heuristic-scan-precedence=yes --phishing-scan-urls=yes --phishing-cloak=yes --phishing-ssl=yes --scan-archive=no /home/ -l /var/log/clamscan.log >/dev/null 2>&1
I’m interested to hear if somebody already is using a clamscan to run on cron without issues, once I’m sure that running it on cron would not lead to server down-times, i’ll implement it via cron job.
Anyone having experience with running clamscan directory scan through crond? 🙂
Tags: antivirus, cake, center, CentOS, Clamav, clamav antivirus, company servers, dangerous files, exploits, gnu linux, hosting servers, impact, Installing, kernel, kind, linux servers, m center, mailer, open source, Phishing, piece, piece of cake, plenty, root, rpm, scanner, script kiddies, spammer, Spammers, time, unwanted files, unwanted users, ver, virus, virus scanner, Viruses, writting, yum
Posted in Linux, System Administration, Web and CMS | 2 Comments »
Thursday, July 7th, 2011 Every now and then I had to tamper routing tables in Linux and every time I had to do it I forgot how I did it last time so finally I decided to put it on my blog and find how I can delete from Linux routing table easier
Deleting a record from a wrong routing table on Linux is a piece of cake basicly, here is an example:
linux:~# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
Let’s say this is the routing table and it’s incorrect as the routing through the node 169.254.0.0 should not be there.
Here is how the routing through 169.254.0.0 can be deleted:
linux:~# /sbin/route del -net 169.254.0.0 netmask 255.255.0.0
Now here is the difference after deletion:
linux:~# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
If you want to delete the default gateway just use 0.0.0.0, e.g. -net 0.0.0.0 .. in above cmd example.
This would delete default gateway record from routing table which by the way in routing tables is marked with the UG flag.
Cheers 😉
Tags: basicly, blog, cake, Cheers, default gateway, deletion, difference, eth, flags, Genmask, Iface, last time, Linux, Metric, Netmask, nKernel, piece, piece of cake, Ref, routing, routing table, sbin, TABLE, tableDestination, time, way
Posted in Linux, System Administration | No Comments »
Friday, July 1st, 2011 My sister’s newly bought laptop is Acer Aspire 5736Z . By the default this notebook comes with some kind of Linux distribution Linpus .
Even though this Linpus (crafted Linux especially for Acer notebooks) looked really nice, it prooved to be a piece of shit linux distro.
Linplus was unable to even establish a simple Wireless WPA2 protected connection with my wireless router, not to mention that the physical Linux consoles (CTRL+ALT+F1) were disabled …
This LinPlus was so bad that I couldn’t even launch any type of terminal on it (I was stuck!) so I decided to kill it and make a decent latest Ubuntu 11.04 Install on it.
I was surprised to find out that trying to boot up the Ubuntu 11.04 installer led me to a black screen (black screen of death).
The v Aspire’s 5736Z monitor kept completely blank, where the hard drive was continuously reading (indicating that the Ubuntu installer has properly booted but it couldn’t light up the notebook screen).
A bit of investigation on any issues with this Acer notebook model has led me to a thread in fedora forums:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=263794
On this forum the same kind of Linux install problem was described to also occur with ASPIREs 5736Z during a Fedora install.
I just tried the suggested fix and it works like a charm.
The fix goes like this:
1. Invoke the Ubuntu settings parameter Install pre install screen
Just press any button while the Ubuntu installer CD is reading and after few secs the Install options screen should appear, like you see it in below’s screenshot:
2. Select the nomodetest Boot CD Ubuntu option
You see in the above screenshot the F6 Other Options . I had toto press F6 and choose the nomodetest boot option to make the Ubuntu be able to further boot up.
After selecting the nomodetest option and pressing on the Install Ubuntu menu option the graphic installer launched succesfully 😉
Hope this small tip to be helpful to some Ubuntu or other Linux user who is trying to install Linux on his Acer Aspire 5736Z
Cheers 😉
Tags: acer notebook, acer notebooks, ASPIRE, ASPIREs, boot cd, boot option, Button, drive, f1, fedora, hard drive, Hope, how to install ubuntu linux, Install, installer cd, investigation, laptop, Linplus, linux consoles, menu option, nomodetest, notebook model, option, options screen, piece, piece of shit, reading, screen, secs, showthread, terminal, thread, tip, toto, type, Ubuntu, wireless router, wpa2
Posted in Linux, Various | 20 Comments »
Sunday, June 19th, 2011 Just completed Arizona Dream by the famous Serbian director Emil Kosturica. The movie is starring Johny Depp an movie actor I’m not too big fan of.
The movie’s plot is too cracky. It all starts and ends with scenes of some Eskimos, where it progresses and depicts later on an ordinary life of an american fisher.
As movie progresses parts of the life of a successful car sells man comes in place. Axel (Johny Depp) is the main actor. The movie revolves around the sexist element.
Some of the scenes and movie delopment looks quite unexpected. Axel starts living in a place with two beautiful woman (a mother in law and a daguther in law).
The mother in law is famous for her passion to attract and sleep with new young man. Axel fells in love and together they follow a dream of building an airplane which is supposed to be used later on as a mean to kill themselves together and according to Eskimos belief bind together their souls for eternity.
The spiritual concepts of the movie are completely messed up and clearly the movie contains references to multitude of anti-christian ideas.
The movie is generally a bit depressing as the atmosphere one can feel is a jail like. Initially Axel fells in love with the mother in law Ellaine, later on near the movie denouement, he losts his passion for Ellain which is a bit older for his age and fells in love with Grace (which is a way younger and even more attractive).
Grace has a severe problems with feeling of unvalueness and suffers with chronic depression and thus things constantly to kill her self.
Near the end of the movie Axel explains himself in love with Grace (which seems to also be in love with him).
However the ending scenes are too sad as Grace decides finally to kill herself and commits suicide with a gun …
Honestly I expected a way more from the movie and I wouldn’t recommend it as a piece of classics or a movie with some significant value.
The rest of the movies directed by Emil Kosturica seems to be a far more superior and positive than this one.
If you want to save yourself from some insanity just stay away from this cranky movie!
Tags: actor, age, airplane, arizona dream, atmosphere, beautiful woman, belief, Bind, chronic depression, daguther, denouement, Depp, dream, element, Ellain, emil, eskimos, eternity, fisher, love, main actor, mother in law, movie actor, movie review, multitude, ordinary life, piece, place, Serbian, spiritual, spiritual concepts, suicide, value, woman, young man
Posted in Movie Reviews | 1 Comment »
Monday, May 23rd, 2011 Kolya is the first Czech movie, I see. The movie is really good and I would classify it as a really art movie.
It also bears the sad melancholic atmosphere that we hold on the Balkans. The movie might be a hard to grasp one for Western people but would definitely be easily understand by someone who lived in the realms of the USSR.
The movie is also a movie that presents realities of the decaying communism, the times before the year of the fall the Berlin Wall (1989).
What was really worthy and edifying for myself was the sad realities of a falling Union (a false idealistic empire built for more than half a century).
The movie starts with the main actor Louka, a middle-aged Czech man dedicated to music (a cellist funeral crematorium orchestra player and a self-employed cello instructor).
Louka has one major muse which helps him follow his music career, the pursuit of new love and sexual relations with woman.
As the situation with falling-communism is harsh and the economic in the Soviet Union is in downturn this kind of trend is even more seriously felt among people who are in art like Louka.
Most of the movie is happening in Golden Prague (One of the most beautiful cities in the world IMHO).
Louka is working a couple of part time jobs next to his music career in the orchestra in order to be able to pay his daily life and bills, one of his other ways to get extra cash is the gravestone inscriptions.
Even though Louka is trying hard to earn money to pay back his loans and get a normal living, he is unsuccessful in getting enough money to make a decent living.
Suddenly he gets into huge debts which he is not able to pay with his earned money. As Louka is single he is offered by one of his debtors to earn money by a small cheat (a false marriage) with a Russian woman who needs Czech citizenship in order to be able to later travel freely to the western part of Europe.
He is offered 30 000 of Czech crons which for that time is a really solid money, which will allow him to pay back his loans and even get a small car Trabant !
Even though Louka tries his best to resist the temptation to do the criminal marriage at certain point the offered money convince him to accept the offering and he merries the young Russian fictiously.
As marriages of this type are quite common in Czech in this days of communism decay, he lives with the promise by the Russian woman family that they will get divorced after 6 months time.
Louka gets married and gets his money, but just a 2 weeks later the Russian young lady emigrates in Germany to her German lover and leaves her young Russian boy Kolya behind under the care of her old mother.
The old mother being unable to accept the sudden escape of her young Russian daughter, gets insane and enters into a mental hospital.
Since Kolya (who speaks only Russian and has not even basic knowledge of Czech) does not a family to be placed in he is being brought to the apartment of his (father in law) Louka.
Louka enters into an unexpected hardships, where the policy could chase him for the illeagal fictious marriage and even worser with a foreign Russian child.
He has never before had any experience with children, so initially he faces the hell of taking care for a child.
To make things even worser the babushka (mentally unstable grandmother) of Kolya passes away after a heart attack in the Mental hospital.
Now Louka is the only “relative” who according to Czech law has to take care for the 5 year old kid Kolya !
The child suffers from suspected meningitis and has to be placed on a course of carefully monitored antibiotics. Louka is threatened with imprisonment for his suspect marriage …
The movie is a serious drama but is a really touching one as it presents the power of love and how love can change human lives as Louka’s gradual love for Kolya changes him for good.
Kolya is a wonderful piece of art movie and a real achievement for Czech cinema. Since it’s the first Czech movie I see I want to see a lot of more.
In the mean time just watch the movie as it’s a wonderful piece of all-time movie classic.
Tags: actor, art, atmosphere, beautiful cities, berlin wall, care, career, cellist, crematorium, crons, czech citizenship, czech film, czech man, debtors, downturn, drama, enough money, family, film drama, Golden, golden prague, gravestone inscriptions, half a century, IMHO, instructor, love, main actor, music career, part time jobs, piece, player, russian woman, sad realities, sexual relations, someone, time, trend, type, woman, year
Posted in Movie Reviews | 1 Comment »
Friday, April 15th, 2011 In my quest to know Linux better and use it capabilities to fulfill a multimedia tasks I came across the question:
How can I extract audio sound and music from Flash Videos .flv file format?
After a bit of investigation online I’ve found out in order to achieve this task the quickest way is via the handy ffmpeg conversion tool .
It’s rather easy actually, all necessery to do the conversion is to have the ffmpeg installed.
FFMpeg is part of Debian and Ubuntu repositories, so if you haven’t installed it yet, go straigh and install it with:
debian:~# apt-get install ffmpeg
...
Many modern day Linux distributions already have the ffmpeg pre-installed by default, ffmpeg even have a Windows version so this little tutorial should be directly applied on a Windows host with installed ffmpeg.
Convertion of a .flv file to .mp3 file for example is a real piece of cake to so do issue the command:
debian:~# ffmpeg -i input_file.flv -ab 128 -ar 44100 output_file.mp3
The few mmpeg options meaning is as follows:
-i (specifies input file)
-ab (Set the audio bitrate in bit/s 64k by default)
-ar (Set the audio sampling frequency (default = 44100 Hz).)
For more options checkout the ffmpeg help.
I found ffmpeg to be a bit slower than I expected. A 17 minutes .flv video file is converted to .mp3 for 38 seconds time.
Here is the textual output I got on my Debian Linux while extracting the flash video’s sound and converting it to mp3:
debian:~# time ffmpeg -i g7tvI6JCXD0.flv -ab 128 -ar 44100 output.mp3
FFmpeg version SVN-r25838, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 the FFmpeg developers
built on Jan 21 2011 08:21:58 with gcc 4.4.5
configuration: –enable-libdc1394 –prefix=/usr –extra-cflags=’-Wall -g ‘ –cc=’ccache cc’ –enable-shared –enable-libmp3lame –enable-gpl –enable-libvorbis –enable-pthreads –enable-libfaac –enable-libxvid –enable-postproc –enable-x11grab –enable-libgsm –enable-libtheora –enable-libopencore-amrnb –enable-libopencore-amrwb –enable-libx264 –enable-libspeex –enable-nonfree –disable-stripping –enable-avfilter –enable-libdirac –disable-decoder=libdirac –enable-libschroedinger –disable-encoder=libschroedinger –enable-version3 –enable-libopenjpeg –enable-libvpx –enable-librtmp –extra-libs=-lgcrypt –disable-altivec –disable-armv5te –disable-armv6 –disable-vis
libavutil 50.33. 0 / 50.39. 0
libavcore 0.14. 0 / 0.14. 0
libavcodec 52.97. 2 / 52.97. 2
libavformat 52.87. 1 / 52.87. 1
libavdevice 52. 2. 2 / 52. 2. 2
libavfilter 1.65. 0 / 1.65. 0
libswscale 0.12. 0 / 0.12. 0
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
[flv @ 0x1336760] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 2000.00 (2000/1) -> 29.92 (359/12)
Input #0, flv, from ‘g7tvI6JCXD0.flv’:
Metadata:
duration : 1060
starttime : 0
totalduration : 1060
width : 480
height : 360
videodatarate : 76
audiodatarate : 94
totaldatarate : 179
framerate : 30
bytelength : 23723246
canseekontime : true
sourcedata : B5F9E82C6HH1302704673918653
purl :
pmsg :
Duration: 00:17:40.35, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 174 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: h264, yuv420p, 480×360 [PAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 77 kb/s, 29.92 tbr, 1k tbn, 2k tbc
Stream #0.1: Audio: aac, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 96 kb/s
WARNING: The bitrate parameter is set too low. It takes bits/s as argument, not kbits/s
Output #0, mp3, to ‘output.mp3’:
Metadata:
duration : 1060
starttime : 0
totalduration : 1060
width : 480
height : 360
videodatarate : 76
audiodatarate : 94
totaldatarate : 179
framerate : 30
bytelength : 23723246
canseekontime : true
sourcedata : B5F9E82C6HH1302704673918653
purl :
pmsg :
TSSE : Lavf52.87.1
Stream #0.0: Audio: libmp3lame, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 0 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.1 -> #0.0
Press [q] to stop encoding
size= 16576kB time=1060.81 bitrate= 128.0kbits/s
video:0kB audio:16575kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.002404%
real 0m38.489s
user 0m37.126s
sys 0m0.764s
When talking about conversions, another very useful application of ffmpeg is in case if you want to:
Extract Audio from online streams
Let’s say you have a favourite radio, you often listen and there are a podcast you want to capture for later listening, or just catch a few nice songs, using ffmpeg it’s a piece of cake by using the command like:
debian:~# ffmpeg -i http:///xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/some -ab 128 -ar 44100 captured-radio-sound.mp3
The possible ways of use of ffmpeg is truly versatily, you can use it for instance if you have to convert some kind of audio or video format to another one I have given a very simple example of converting a .flv file to .avi and vice versa in my previous post
Tags: audio bitrate, audio sampling, BSD, cake, ccache, cflags, conversion tool, convertion, debian linux, ffmpeg, file, format, gcc, height, input file, investigation, jan 21, JCXD, Linux, multimedia tasks, music, necessery, piece, piece of cake, sampling frequency, Set, Sound, sound and music, starttime, textual output, time, tool, Ubuntu, ubuntu repositories, video, video file, Videos, width, windows version
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video | 1 Comment »