Written by A ton of useful packages are available via the Fedora EPEL repository. Adding it to a CentOS system is a simple case of installing the appropriate RPM.
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No urgin’ for Virgin
It’s pretty difficult to use Virgin miles – finding redemption availability is nigh-on impossible; and in the past we’ve found that miles+money redemption is a con since its availability seems to be on pre-discount fares – that is you’ll be able to book a miles+money fare only to find that three days later the cash-only fare will be less than you’ve just paid with miles on top.
So, having failed to use them for a while, Claire’s miles are going to expire. Having received an email about transferring them to other members, we looked at moving them over to my account.
The small print suggests there’s a £15 transaction fee for doing so. A bit of a con for a simple computerized transaction, but still worth it at a stretch. But, it turns out that Virgin want a total of £240 for the ‘privilege’ of moving some miles from one account to another: they also charge a ‘mileage fee’ that increases the cost as the number of miles increases (as if the real cost of moving more miles is bigger), and yes, that is ridiculous.
What also surprises me in with this con is that they place a limit of 30k transferred in any one year. That might make sense when there’s no cost associated with a transfer, but when you’re charging people through the teeth each time, surely you would remove any limit to maximise your revenue?
Either way, I still have 80k miles – though I’m doubtful of our ability to use them before they too expire next year; And, given Virgin’s wonderful mileage scheme and its idiosyncracies, we’re not in any hurry to earn any more of their miles. Well done! Two customers lost.
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Visa applications
So, applying for an Indian visa (like any country’s visa) is a laugh. From the shockingly crap form, accompanied by shockingly crap guidance (read: almost none), the shockingly crap requirements and the shockingly crap process it’s a real hoot. Considering visas are a con to raise revenue you’d think they’d make it really easy… a few words of hindsight then:
When you go to submit your application, take:
- An application form, ideally one that the applicant has filled in and signed.
- The relevant passport(s)
- The relevant photos (see below)
Yes, you would think the above is obvious but it would appear that 1-in-3 people walking in on Monday morning didn’t manage it.
The application form is online. It’s a fairly appalling piece of web ‘development’, presumably created to make you seriously consider two things: first, do you really want to go there; and secondly why on God’s-good-earth do we outsource IT to a country that produces stuff like that?!
Amongst many other things, your form will ask for a (mandatory) UK reference. No, I don’t know why. I could assume that it wants the tour operator name perhaps, but with no guidance it’s hard to say. I don’t really know what to suggest here as it can be interpreted pretty much any way you like… I don’t have a tour operator so I put my boss since he’s also a friend. (I’d considered putting my cat, and/or my mummy)
If you’re going to India for a holiday, say for two weeks, you might assume you need a 1-month visa; and; to any normal person (still in the absence of any guidance) this would likely be a perfectly reasonable conclusion. A helpful piece of information printed on a piece of paper stuck to a noticeboard in a stairwell of the visa office in another city however, will tell you that visa durations start on the date of submission (at least somebody thought it was worth mentioning). Make sure therefore that you extend out accordingly, for example turning my 2-week requirement into a 6-month visa application.
Your photos should be 2in-by-2in. Yes that’s non-standard. Yes it’s a pain to obtain. Yes it’s thoroughly pointless. Regardless, take two. The form won’t tell you to take two photos, and nor will the non-existent guidance (despite telling you in great detail about the exact distance in millimeters required between your eyebrows); but the counter clerk in the office will once you’ve waited to submit the form.
Finally you might have stated on your forms that you don’t want SMS-updates telling you the progress of your visa. Regardless they’ll charge you for them.
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Mail problems
You may be experiencing difficulty sending or receiving mail. This is because you are configured to use either mail.unblue.co.uk or mail01.unblue.co.uk as either your POP3/IMAP (receiving) or SMTP (sending) server address.
Please reconfigure your connection to use just “unblue.co.uk” as the server address.
For reference, full mail connection details can be found under the Personal Settings > Server Info tab when you log into Webmail.
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Migration: phase 1 complete
Phase 1 migration has completed.
If you experience any difficulties please do let me know.
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Possible services disruption
This week, all services are being transitioned to new server instances in order to support high-availability and a more secure network. Whilst services go through this transition it’s possible that some of them might become unavailable for short periods of time.
Please do let me know if you experience any outages.
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Less speed, more haste
From LinkedIn today:
Chris Yiu is now connected to Helen Lewis, Digtal enagement manager at HM Treasury
Doesn’t bode well for Helen Lewis’ digital engagements, huh?
Modifying codecs
Does anybody know how to have partial subtitles in an .mp4 file? So far I have all, or none. I don’t need subtitles for a predominantly English film, but then I do need them in the one or two scenes that are in other languages…
This is automatic on a normal DVD stream, so I imagine it must be possible?
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Changing codecs
Like many people, I have a fair number of DVDs; and given the upscaling strengths of both the PS3 and Denon amplifier, I don’t have many Blueray discs. In fact, the PS3 is almost exclusively used as a media player since it ties beautifully to the NAS on which I store every bit of non-DVD media; and every CD I buy gets ripped to mp3 and dutifully archived in the loft…
Given this trend, I’ve decided to take a similar approach to the DVDs, and store the lot of them digitally instead. My experience of this process goes back almost 15 years now and I would normally just use DivX and mp3 audio as my codec-of-choice. However, a few keys things have changed since those heady days of Winamp:
Firstly, I find that between the PS3, the Samsung TV and VLC on various computers, AVI containers with DivX video just aren’t reliable as a storage method. What plays on one won’t on the other; audio synchronization can be as issue; and there are filesize limitations. The new kid on the block appears to be MKV, but that has inconsistent support – so it doesn’t really solve the problem.
Secondly, 15-10 years ago, disk sizes were in the 10-100GB range. I remember having my first RAID disaster with an array of five 120GB disks. These days, 2TB is the norm and (subject to regional floods) can be got for almost nothing. So, whilst my gut instinct is to stick to the ~700MB per film approach I used to, I don’t intend to burn these to disc nor do I care about the capacity I’ll use (within reason!).
Lastly, I used to use stereo MP3, and that was (and is) fine for audio that requires nothing more. I never used to have decent surround sound equipment, nor the desire to sacrifice video quality within the tight constraint of that 700MB target filesize. These days however, I just can’t think why I shouldn’t retain all 5.1 surround sound channels.
With these new requirements in mind then, I’ve elected for MP4 containers with h264/AAC encoding. Some tests I’ve run show 320kbps AAC audio with 1.1Mbps h264 video runs at about 10MB/minute, with quality pretty indistinguishable from the original DVD. It also plays nicely with every piece of equipment I own.
The problem I have is that I have no idea on the optimum way to convert what video I already have. With a couple of thousand existing video files in predominantly AVI(Divx) format, I need something scripted; ffmpeg is likely the correct option, but whilst I can put together conversion parameters that do the job, the resulting quality is abysmal. Answers on a (h264) postcard…
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