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Stream of Conciousness Youtube Videos on Linux

While sitting watching TV I yearned for a more stream-of-consciousness experience. Youtube was the answer.

However, Youtube requires too much interaction. I wanted to vege out and let it just feed me the stream of random images and sound. Selecting purely random youtube videos sounded like a bad idea though…

I decided to do a twitter search for anything with a youtube link, and then let a script just enqueue them into totem, ad-infinitum. Here is my abomination:

#!/bin/bash
while [ 1 ];
do
 for EACHVIDEO in `wget -O - -q "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=youtube.com" | grep http://www.youtube.com | grep "<content" | sed 's/quot;/\n/g' | grep "http://www.youtube.com" | cut -f 1 -d "&" `
 do
 totem --enqueue `youtube-dl -g -b "$EACHVIDEO" ` &
 sleepĀ  2s
 done
 sleep 30s
done

You need a recent version of the youtube-dl script, located here. Put it in your path as appropriate. Press N for next! Next! Next!



							

Sparkfun’s Autonomous Vehicle Competition

The Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition (AVC) was a smash! You can watch some footage of the event at Sparkfun’s Ustream page.

Here is what the starting / finishing line looked like:

And some judges on the roof watching to make sure the Flying robots do not cut corners.

I was very impressed by the UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). Most of them were able to complete the course in record time. Some were even able to land autonomosouly!

Robota-Landing DougWiebel-landing Robota-Launch

Sorry for the 3gp format, it is native to the Droid. I wasn’t satisfied with the outcome of a transcode from ffmpeg or gstreamer. If someone wants to transcode for me, I would be happy to re-upload.

I was unimpressed with the ground vehicles. Only a few were able to complete the course. (Just four turns around the Sparkfun building) Most couldn’t make it past the first turn. Did they simply not test them? Was it the new environment? I wasn’t able to tell.

For sparkfun, having a three-piece band to play during the heats was a big win! They certainly kept the audience entertained, and by the time the 3rd heat came around, every team had their very own made-up-silly-them-song. I suppose it would be the equivalent of the organ player at a baseball game, but on steroids.

I hope to enter and win the next years competition!

Yes yes… very professional…

I’m not saying that all OS’s don’t have problems, but it would be nice if you didn’t plaster the problems all over the store :)

How to Fix a Power Plug with Sugru!

I have a first generation Asus Eeepc, but the power plug is failing. All plugs do this eventually. Lots of tiny wires, bending back and forth all the time… It just happens.

So should I throw it away and buy a new one? No! It can be easily fixed. Here is what you need:

  • Soldering Iron + Solder
  • Flux helps if you have it (If you have not soldered with flux, you are missing out big time)
  • Heat shrink or electrical tape
  • Sugru can add a nice touch

Start by using a sharp blade to cut off the plastic molding around the connector to expose the raw barrel connector and wires:

Now your soldering skills will be put to the test. Flux helps! Don’t forget to put the heat shrink on first before you solder:

Yea, the sugru, graciously provided by DangerJim could use an artist’s touch.

But it works! Looks pretty good.

Help Wanted: What is the pattern in these new WEP Keys?

Can you see the pattern?

ESSID ESSID in Hex BSSID KEY
MCFVC 23CB158 0021636A7177 F8AA1AABA2
H47MD 1B6B095 001D19E2A557 BFD896F9D4
Q36G7 29C9D67 0021632D31E3 BCD77B3755
UX78G 31880E0 0024d2682944 18DD3AB249

These key pairs were graciously provided by Eric Betts. They do not conform to my existing WEP key calculator.

Maybe Verizon wised up and made them random? The previous correlation was dead obvious, but this one I can’t see.

Of course, I am only a wannabe cryptologist :)