In addition to his high-profile acting, Fry has written for TV and is the writer of "Bright Young Things". For the full story, visit The Stage.
Stephen Fry: UK TV writers "treated like dirt"
In addition to his high-profile acting, Fry has written for TV and is the writer of "Bright Young Things". For the full story, visit The Stage.
Sista rycket inför SWDC2009
Jag fick just reda på av DFS att vi stänger dörrarna i morgon för registreringar till Scandinavian Web Developer Conference 2009. Så om ni har funderat på att ta del av världens Webutvecklar-stjärnor på Måndag, registrera er _nu_ :)
Mvh,
PS
Promotion for "Learning Dojo"

Here's a little something for anyone wavering about getting "Learning Dojo" or not. To get a 12% discount, do the following;
1.) Visit the book page: http://www.packtpub.com/tutorial-for-building-interactive-interfaces-with-dojo/book.
2.) Click the "ADD TO CART" button to add the book to your shopping cart.
3.) Enter your promotion code: Dojo2688 in the Promotion Code field in your shopping cart, and click the Update button. The discounted price should now be reflected in your order.
Cheers,
PS
Screenwriting conference in Dublin in June
For more details, visit the JDIFF.
La Palme dort!

Brilliant headline from France's "Scénaristes" magazine: "La palme dort". Translated, it means "The Palm is sleeping". Sub-headline: "The world's biggest film festival continues to marginalise scriptwriters. How about a change?"
An example? It's probably worth remembering that last year the scriptwriters of France's biggest hit (by far), "Bienvenu chez les Ch'tis/Welcome to the Sticks", were not invited to attend the screening at Cannes. No room on the list, apparently. Cannes is basically a celebration of the cult of the director-as-author, to the point where the actual writers drop off the map. I'm not sure if Scénaristes can change that. But the French writers' union UGS that publish the magazine are very active at Cannes, organising a script market tied with breakfast meetings with producers and directors, as well as a "white night" - definitely worth checking at Cannes. Check here for details. Way to go.
"John Rabe" picks up Germany's Lola Award

Director/writer Florian Gallenberger's "John Rabe" picked up the awards for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Production Design and Best Costume Design at Germany's Lola Awards last Friday. "John Rabe" is being hailed as "China's Schindler", as it tells the tale of a German manager of Siemens that tries to save Chinese civilians during the Japanese invasion of Shanghai during the Second World War.
Özgür Yildirim’s "Chiko" picked up the Best Screenplay Award.
Complete list of winners:
Golden Lola for Best Film: John Rabe by Florian Gallenberger
Silver Lola for Best Film: A Year Ago In Winter by Caroline Link
Bronze Lola for Best Film: Cloud 9 by Andreas Dresen
Best Documentary: Nobody's Perfect by Niko von Glasow
Best Children’s Film: Nothing Else Matters by Julia von Heinz
Best Screenplay: Özgür Yildirim for Chiko
Best Director: Andreas Dresen for Cloud 9
Best Actress in a Leading Role: Ursula Werner in Cloud 9
Best Actor in a Leading Role: Ulrich Tukur in John Rabe
Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Sophie Rois in The Architect
Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Andreas Schmidt in Fleisch ist mein Gemüse
Best Cinematography: Kolja Brandt for North Face
Best Editing: Sebastian Thümler for Chiko
Best Production Design: Tu Ju Hua for John Rabe
Best Costume Design: Lisy Christl for John Rabe
Best Score: Niki Reiser for A Year Ago In Winter Best Sound: Christian Bischoff, Tschangis Chahrokh, Heinz Ebner and Guido Zettier for North Face
Supply
Supposing you go on trains a lot, and you listen to audiobooks and/or podcasts when you do. I know of two problems that tend to arise then.
- The trains are too damn loud and you can't actually hear your shows, even if you set your audio player on full blast and your hands over your ears.
- You do this way too often and you get tired of shifting files by hand, especially if you've gotta do this file by file, since your audio player cares about the order in which files are loaded onto it, and your file system does not cooperate. Geek.
I've been putting it together for several weeks (I actually started last year and then got bored), scripting during lectures and so forth (when I should've really been paying attention to the complexities of MPEG-7) and came up with this wild bunch of code, all tied together.
It seems to work too!
It has several options:
- Target is the device you want to put stuff on. In my case this can be /media/disk or /media/KINGSTON. I suggest fixing this up in the script itself (line 40) or, preferably, in the config file (more on that later).
- Subdir(ectory) is a directory on the device that you want to put stuff in. I'd not set this up to fixed values anywhere, and would call it Books and Music. This would result in the files being placed into /media/disk/Books and /media/disk/Music, respectivelly.
- Quiet will make the script not print out any info comments. It will still print out various warnings and assorted errors - if you want to desperately get rid of those redirect the error stream to /dev/null, like to
./supply 2> /dev/null - Gain probably the most important bit for us train-and-tram commuters. Sets a tag in ogg and mp3 files that tells the player to play louder. Setting gain to 5 will make it really loud... if you set it too loud it will start crackling like the bejesus...
But the purpose of this exercise to have it all simple! And that's where to config file comes in. You take the file called .supplyrc and put it in your home (~) directory (see line 41 in the source code). You put in the values you like into the config file, and you don't have to worry too much about configuration anymore! Isn't life grand?
So here's a simple example of use (supposing you're using my config file, as shown below):
This will put the audiobook into the directory /media/disk/Books/Nineteen\ Eighty-Four and increase the gain to 2, so it will be a bit louder.
Oh yeah! I almost forgot. You need to acquire vorbisgain and/or mp3gain to make oggs and/or mp3s louder. I usually install them via apt:
Gain modification will only work with oggs and mp3, and they have to have the appropriate extensions (because I have to tell them apart somehow) - ogg or oga, or mp3.
And another thing, this one's GPL v3 or more.
Here's the config file I made for myself and as a general template:
2 # Filename: ~/.supplyrc
3 # Default settings for supply.sh
4
5 # Path to the device. Where to put the files by default.
6 # Needs to be a directory and end in a slash (/).
7 target=/media/disk/
8
9 # Where to put the files on the device pointed to by $target.
10# Needs to be a directory and end in a slash (/).
11subdir=Books/
12
13# Gain setup. Leave commented out to have no gain by default.
14# An arbitrary number.
15# gain=0
16
17# Quiet mode: print messages, or not.
18# Allowed values: true, false.
19# quiet=true
And here's the code:
2
3 # Supply
4 #
5 # A script to supply your audio player with new audio files, with the
6 # extra ability to control gain in oggs and mp3s.
7 #
8 # Usage:
9 # t, target=<DIR> - Move media onto specified device
10 # d, subdirectory=<DIR> - Move media to a dir on the device (opt.)
11 # c, config=<FILE> - Apply specified configuration file (opt.)
12 # g, gain=<NUMBER - Apply specified gain value to all files (opt.)
13 # q, quiet - Do not print info messages (but still print warnings)
14 # v, verbose - Print info messages (opposite of quiet)
15 # <FILE LIST> - Act on these files and directories
16 #
17 # Requires:
18 # vorbisgain
19 # mp3gain
20 #
21 # Addendum regarding Ogg gain controls:
22 # vorbisgain input files must be Ogg Vorbis I files with 1 or 2
23 # channels and a sample rate of 48 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 32 kHz, 24
24 # kHz, 22050 Hz, 16 kHz, 12 kHz, 11025 Hz or 8 kHz. If an input
25 # file contains multiple streams (i.e., it is chained), the
26 # streams must all have the same format, in terms of sampling
27 # frequency and number of channels. All streams in a chained file
28 # are processed, but the ReplayGain tags are only written to (or
29 # removed from) the first stream.
30 # -- vorbisgain(1)
31 # License:
32 # Copyright 2009 Konrad Siek <konrad.siek@gmail.com>
33 # This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or
34 # modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
35 # published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of
36 # the License, or (at your option) any later version. See
37 # <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/> for details.
38
39 # Default settings
40 target=/media/disk
41 config=~/.supplyrc
42 source=.
43 quiet='false'
44 #subdir=Books
45
46 # Echo function with possible silencing
47 function sysout {
48 if [ "$quiet" != 'true' ]
49 then
50 echo "$0: $1"
51 fi
52 }
53
54 # Echo function redirecting to standard error
55 function syserr {
56 echo "$0: $1" >& 2
57 }
58
59 # Parse options
60 options=$(\
61 getopt \
62 -o c:t:g:d:q:v \
63 --long gain:,target:,config:,subdirectory:,quiet,verbose \
64 -n $0 -- "$@" \
65 )
66
67 # Stop if there's some sort of problem
68 if [ $? != 0 ]
69 then
70 syserr "Argh! Parsing went pear-shaped!"
71 exit 1
72 fi
73
74 # Set the parsed command options
75 eval set -- "$options"
76
77 # Setup selected options
78 while [ 1 ]
79 do
80 case "$1" in
81 -c|--config)
82 config=$2
83 shift 2
84 ;;
85 -g|--gain)
86 custom_gain=$2
87 shift 2
88 ;;
89 -t|--target)
90 custom_target=$2
91 shift 2
92 ;;
93 -d|--subdirectory)
94 custom_subdir=$2
95 shift 2
96 ;;
97 -q|--quiet)
98 custom_quiet='true'
99 shift
100 ;;
101 -v|--verbose)
102 custom_quiet='false'
103 shift
104 ;;
105 --)
106 # Stop parsing options
107 shift
108 break
109 ;;
110 *)
111 # Weird error
112 syserr "Hide! It's gonna blow!"
113 exit 2
114 ;;
115 esac
116done
117
118# Source config file if one exists
119if [ -f $config ]
120then
121 sysout "Sourcing configuration file: $config"
122 . "$config"
123else
124 sysout "No configuration file present."
125fi
126
127# Apply the so-called custom settings
128if [ $custom_gain ]; then gain=$custom_gain; fi
129if [ $custom_target ]; then target=$custom_target; fi
130if [ $custom_subdir ]; then subdir=$custom_subdir; fi
131if [ $custom_quiet ]; then quiet=$custom_quiet; fi
132
133# Create full path
134fullpath="$target/$subdir"
135
136# If destination doesn't exist...
137if [ -e $fullpath ]
138then
139 # Ok, so there is something there...
140 if [ ! \( -d $fullpath \) ]
141 then
142 # ...but that something is not a directory!
143 syserr "$fullpath is not a directory"
144 exit 4
145 fi
146 if [ ! \( -w $fullpath \) ]
147 then
148 # ...but we can't write there!
149 syserr "No write permission for $fullpath"
150 exit 8
151 fi
152else
153 # Create destination
154 mkdir -p $fullpath 2> /dev/null
155 if [ "$?" != 0 ]
156 then
157 syserr "Can't create destination $fullpath"
158 exit 16
159 fi
160fi
161
162# Apply gain, you daft bugger.
163# Seriously, do I have to spell it out for you?
164function gain {
165 # Resolve extension
166 ext=$(echo "$1" | awk -F "." '{print $NF}')
167
168 # Use the correct damn gain modification tool
169 if [ \( "$ext" == "ogg" \) -o \( "$ext" == "oga" \) ]
170 then
171 # Print short info
172 sysout "Setting gain to $gain for $(basename "$1") using vorbisgain"
173
174 # Run gain update for oggs
175 vorbisgain -q -g $gain "$1" 2> /dev/null
176 elif [ "$ext" == "mp3" ]
177 then
178 # Print short info
179 sysout "Setting gain to $gain for $(basename "$1") using mp3gain"
180
181 # Run gain update for mp3s
182 mp3gain -k -q -g $gain "$1" 2> /dev/null
183 else
184 syserr "Skiping gain modification for $(basename "$1")"
185 fi
186}
187
188# Process an unknown file type
189# (Direcotries are also a kind of file...)
190function resolve {
191 relative=$topdir${1:$cutoff}
192 #echo $cutoff $relative
193
194 if [ ! -d "$1" ]
195 then
196 sysout "Copying $(basename "$1") to $(dirname "$fullpath/$relative")"
197
198 # Copy a file to destination
199 cp "$1" "$fullpath/$relative"
200
201 # Apply gain modification
202 if [ "$gain" != "" ]
203 then
204 gain "$fullpath/$relative"
205 fi
206 else
207 sysout "Creating directory $fullpath/$relative"
208
209 # Create a directory at destination
210 mkdir -p "$fullpath/$relative"
211
212 # Copy stuff
213 cp_dir "$1"
214
215 # TODO This could be optional...
216 fi
217}
218
219# Process a directory
220function cp_dir {
221 find "$1" | sort | while read f
222 do
223 # Do NOT work on your own self, dumbass!
224 if [ "$f" == "$1" ]
225 then
226 continue
227 fi
228
229 # But work on everything else, accordingly
230 resolve "$f"
231 done
232}
233
234# Copy files from the sources to the destination directory
235if [ "$#" == 0 ]
236then
237 # If no paths were given, use the current directory
238 cp_dir "."
239else
240 for arg
241 do
242 cutoff=${#arg}
243 topdir=$(basename "$arg")/
244
245 resolve "$arg"
246 done
247fi
The code is also available at GitHub as bash/.supplyrc and bash/supply.
Pirate Bay: a writer's perspective
The Pirate Bay ruling has unleashed a lot of emotion on the web. It's interesting that the discussions have centred on movies rather than music this time. Coming from the music biz, I can safely say to the movie businesses: "you ain't seen nothing yet" in terms of piracy. For creators, trying to find justifications for Pirate Bay is a very dangerous game to play for - in my opinion - two major reasons. 1) it promotes piracy on a very, very large scale indeed, and 2) by centralising free content it also blocks any of the other initiatives that creators might try and put in place.
Let me explain: the one big lesson people are not taking from the music debacle is that creators need to connect directly with their audiences. This is even more important to me than individual distribution. We have to build and nurture audiences so that they are available to us, rather than third-party sites. The good news for people that like it is that giving stuff away is going to be a major part of the new biz anyway. But WE have to be giving it away to OUR audiences. The freebies have to be part of OUR strategy, not Pirate Bay's or YouTube's. People have to come to OUR sites, and be exposed to OUR goodies, T-shirts, Director's Cuts, downloadable scripts, public appearances and OUR ads. Otherwise we will never be able to control our futures.
By giving everything away both YouTube and Pirate Bay short-circuit our ability to build audiences as they hold onto both the visitor data and the advertising revenue, leaving us the crumbs from our own table.
Most people I know are aware that people spend money to create music and movies, and are willing to participate in one way or another. Personally, I like visiting the sites of writers and directors, reading their comments and occasionally buying their books, movies or whatever. But both Pirate Bay and YouTube increase the distance between the creator and the spectator, which is why I think they both should be treated with caution.
All the rest about freedom, copyrights and the end of the world as we know it is editorial chatter.
Comment mettre le flux (fil) de son blog sur un site ?
"Il Divo" opens in Germany

Paolo Sorrentino's explosive account of Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti opens in Germany. The film takes a look at the secrets behind power in Italy during Andreotti's successive spells as the Prime Minister. Andreotti was known as the untouchable, with possible links to the Masonic lodge and the Sicilian mafia. Not surprisingly, Sorentino's film had a hard time finding financing and sponsors in Italy but made a deep impression at Cannes, where it won the Prix du Jury. "Il Divo" is also currently playing in Belgium. Official site.
Convert file encodings
I wrote this program once, called Tester, which my dad is using in his day-to-day language teaching.
I wrote the thing quite a long time ago, so it's a bit buggy here and there, and one of the problems is that it doesn't handle encodings well. Since dad is thinking about using Ubuntu, the mishandled encodings are a problem: he used to have them encoded as WINDOWS-1250, but the current settings allow him to use only UTF-8 on Ubuntu.
Hence, this program, to convert between the two. Since the files come in bulk, I figured doing entire directories at once is a good idea.
Also, I wrote it in about an hour and a bit, so it might be a bit buggy here and there...
Here's the code:
2
3 # Convert directory
4 #
5 # Convert text files in the directory from one encoding to another,
6 # all in a simple GUI. Converts between UTF-8 and WINDOWS-1250.
7 #
8 # Requires:
9 # zenity
10# iconv
11# Author:
12# Konrad Siek
13
14
15# Get directory to convert files in
16directory=$(\
17 zenity \
18 --file-selection \
19 --directory \
20 --title="Select a directory to convert" \
21)
22
23# If none selected, quit.
24if [ $? != 0 ]
25then
26 exit 1
27fi
28
29# Select source encoding from a list.
30source_encoding=$(\
31 zenity --list \
32 --column="Encoding" \
33 --title="Source encoding" \
34 --text="The files are currently encoded as... " \
35 WINDOWS-1250 UTF-8 \
36)
37
38# If none selected, quit.
39if [ $? != 0 ]
40then
41 exit 1
42fi
43
44# Select destination encoding from a list.
45destination_encoding=$(\
46 zenity --list \
47 --column="Encoding" \
48 --title="Destination encoding" \
49 --text="And you want these files encoded as... " \
50 UTF-8 WINDOWS-1250 \
51)
52
53# If none selected, quit.
54if [ $? != 0 ]
55then
56 exit 1
57fi
58
59# For all files in the selected directory...
60find "$directory" -type f | while read f
61do
62 # Get information about the file.
63 extension=${f#*.}
64 basename=$(basename "$f" ".$extension")
65 addition=$(echo "$destination_encoding" | tr -d - | tr [A-Z] [a-z])
66 output="$directory/$basename.$addition.$extension"
67
68 # Convert encoding.
69 iconv \
70 --from-code="$source_encoding" \
71 --to-code="$destination_encoding" \
72 --output="$output" \
73 "$f"
74
75 echo "Created $directory/$basename.$addition.$extension"
76done
77
78# Notify on finish
79zenity --info --text="Operation complete." --title="Complete"
80
The code is also available at GitHub as bash/convert_directory.
Google : recherche d' images par couleur
Rhino JavaScript working on App Engine Java Edition

I was super-excited this morning, when I saw the announcement that Google had released a Java version of their App Engine environment. My heart sank a bit when I read that they had a class white-list for security reasons, and told myself that I wouldn't be surprised if that means that you cant run Server-side JavaScript at all.
However, after reading Ola Bini's quick article on how to enable JRuby, I felt that it might be doable, after all, JS doesn't even have Threads (which more or less thankfully are disabled in GAE). It _should_ work.
So I went and downloaded the eclipse plugin, created a new project, which came with its own "Hello World" servlet and dropped the Mozilla labs JS version 1.7 jar (from the Dojo Ajax Toolkit's util/shrinksafe folder) into the lib/ folder of the GAE project, added some paths here and there -- and it worked.
I tried something really simple like this;
...
String s = "var foo = {foo: 17, bar: 4711}; foo.foo;";
Object result = cx.evaluateString(scope, s, "
resp.getWriter().println(Context.toString(result));
...
And out I got a
17
:)
I just saw that Google has limited the Java GAE SDK for the 10 first to register. I guess Sweden was the right place to be :) If you want to see my sample project, you can download it from here;
http://genericwitticism.com/rhino.zip
Cheers,
PS
New Adjani film debuts on TV

Purely by accident, I caught most of the new Isabelle Adjani film "La journée de la jupe" written and directed by Jean-Paul Lilienfeld on Arte recently. I was impressed by the young cast and wondered why I hadn't heard about it before. The reason is that the film actually premièred on television, and is only now being released in France and Belgium. Isn't this backwards logic? Aren't we told that movies should be in the theatres first and then on TV and lastly on DVD? It's all the more interesting as the film brought Arte its biggest audience rating to date, nearly 2.5 million spectators or almost 9.6% of French TV audiences.
It will be interesting to see if this creates a buzz for the release. It certainly worked for Arte. The film has caused such debate that Arte decided to postpone the re-broadcasts. A message on Isabelle Adjani's blog invites people to catch the movie in theatres. Arte is a co-producer with Mascaret Films, Fontana and the RTBF. Visit the official site (in French).
Jar City exclu 9movies


Critiques :
Synopsis
Inspecteur à Reykjavik, Erlendur enquête sur le meurtre d'un vieil homme apparemment sans histoire. La photo de la tombe d'une petite fille retrouvée chez la victime réveille pourtant une affaire vieille de quarante ans. Et conduit Erlendur tout droit à Jar City, surprenante collection de bocaux renfermant des organes, véritable fichier génétique de la population islandaise...
Lien AlloCiné.Com : http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefil...lm=131959.html

Nom de la Release : Jar.City.2006.FRENCH.LiMiTED.iNTERNAL.DVDRip.XviD-ZANBiC
Qualité : DVDRiP
Encodage : XViD
Langue : VF
Mu ici
L'Armée des morts


Critiques :
Synopsis
Personne ne peut expliquer comment tout cela est arrivé, mais ce matin, le monde n'est plus qu'un immense cauchemar. La population de la planète se résume désormais à une horde de morts vivants assoiffés de sang et lancés à la poursuite des derniers êtres humains encore en vie. Après avoir miraculeusement réussi à s'échapper de son quartier, Ana Clark se barricade avec un petit groupe de survivants dans un centre commercial. André et sa femme enceinte, Michael et Kenneth, officiers de police, vont tout faire pour rester vivants. Alors que dehors, la situation est de pire en pire, à l'intérieur, il faut aussi faire face aux peurs et aux démons de chacun.
Lien AlloCiné.Com : http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefil...ilm=51739.html

Qualité : DVDRiP
Encodage : XViD
Langue : VF


Lien Mu ici
Alone in the dark



Origine du film : canadien
Réalisateur : Uwe Boll
Acteurs : Christian Slater, Tara Reid, Stephen Dorff
Genre : Thriller, Fantastique
Durée : 1h 36min
Date de sortie : Aucune information ...
Année de production : 2003
Titre Original : Aucune information ...
Distribué par : Aucune information ...
Critiques spectateurs :
Bande annonce : Aucune bande annonce disponible pour ce film ...

Les aventures du détective Edward Carnby parti sur l'île de Shadow Island pour enquêter sur le meurtre d'un ami. Sur place, il fera équipe avec une anthropologiste se nommant Aline Cedrac et sera poursuivi par des créatures de l'ombre.

Hébergeur : MégaUpload
Qualité : DVDRiP
Format : XviD
Langue : Français
Sous-titre : Aucun
Découper avec : Aucun
Nombre de fichiers : 1 Fichiers
Taille des fichiers : 700 Mo
Taille totale : 700 Mo

MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service
Pour le streaming :
MEGAVIDEO - I'm watching it
Mot de pass : Aucun
Total du post: 700 Mo