Plattform

Kommandoene brukt her, er tilgjengelig på Mac OS X og Linux og andre unix-systemer. Å gjøre dette på Windows, vil sannsynligvis kreve andre verktøy, selv om nevnte verktøy kan fungere under Cygwin eller kanskje enda lettere på CoLinux.

Framgangsmåte

Jeg hentet ned alle .mp4-filene med bittorrent (bortsett fra e11.RVK-BNN, som ingen ser ut til å ville seede). Komprimert video består av forskjellige “rammer”, det være seg I-rammer, som i praksis er JPEG-bilder, P-rammer som inneholder forskjellen mellom forrige I- eller P-ramme og nåværende bilde, og B-rammer som har forskjellen mellom to I- eller P-rammer. I-rammer sendes normalt cirka 1 gang per sekund, så for å gjøre det enkelt, startet jeg uthenting av alle I-rammene i videostrømmene. Disse lagres som JPEG-filer og kan senere sys sammen til en hurtigversjon av videostrømmen. For å hente ut disse, brukte jeg ffmpeg:

$ ffmpeg -i Hurtigruten.e15.ORS-BOO.1920x1080.h264.NRK.2011619.095708.mp4 \
-y -ss 5 -an -sameq -f image2 -r 1 filename%06d.jpg


Med alle i-rammene, totalt 350 403 JPEG-filer, cirka 120GB totalt, startet jeg med å lage en filmsnutt per strekning. For den første, tok jeg ikke hensyn til størrelse, men ville ha høyest mulig kvalitet. Eksempel på generering av denne følger under:

$ mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf fps=25 -ovc x264 -o 17.STU-SVJ.mp4

Dette genererer en H.264-video i høy kvalitet, men filene blir for store til at de er praktiske til videredistribusjon, noen over 1GB. Men siden de har såpass høy kvalitet, kan de brukes som basis for ytterligere behandling. For å få videosnuttene ned i mer fornuftige formater, rekodet jeg filene:

$ mencoder $INPUT_FILENAME -o $OUTPUT_FILENAME -ovc x264 \
-x264encopts bitrate=3000:bframes=4:nr=1000


Til sist la jeg på lyd – dette er ikke gjort på det som er lasta opp med tanke på copirettigheter og sånt

$ ffmpeg -i 04.TVK-AES.mp4 -i "01 Nook & Cranny.mp3" -vcodec copy -acodec copy 04.TVK-AES-sound.mp4

Lenker til flere av filene kommer snart….

Først litt bakgrunnsinfo. Mange åpne trådløse soner bruker såkalte «captive portals» der eieren av nettet, slik som NSB Interaktiv, ønsker litt kontroll. Disse er typisk basert på filtrering på nettkortets MAC-adresse. MAC-adressen er unik per nettkort og ser ut som noe sånt som 00:01:26:3B:C5:DE. I utgangspunktet vil portalen sperre for all trafikk fra ukjente MAC-adresser, med unntak av web-trafikk (HTTP), så når det så kommer en HTTP-forespørsel fra en for systemet ukjent MAC-adresse, blir denne redirigert til webportalens autentiseringsmodul, hvor brukeren enten svarer «jada, jeg vet hva jeg driver med» eller blir bedt om brukernavn og passord, eventuelt registrering/ og/eller betaling. Når brukeren er autentisert, legges maskinens MAC-adresse til en tabell slik at utgående trafikk tillates. I tillegg kan portalen legge opp forskjellige nivåer av logging, og har gjerne integrert mellomlagring (proxying).

NSB har tydeligvis funnet ut at dette ikke er bra nok, og har laget sitt eget system. Først må du registrere deg med fullt navn, mobilnummer, adresse, postnummer og fødselsdato. Ved registreringen gis du ingen informasjon om hva som logges, hva NSB skal med alt dette, eller noe annet – det er bare en knapp for å gå videre. Vel gjennom, kan du bruke nettet, men bare om du vil surfe på webben, og bare fra Internet Explorer. Forsøk fra Firefox eller Opera eller Safari, sender nettleseren inn i ei løkke der den prøver å koble til noe sånt som http://interaktiv.nsb.no/?OriginalURL=http%3A%2F%2Finteraktiv.nsb.no%2F?OriginalURL=http%3A%2F%2Finteraktiv.nsb.no%2F?OriginalURL=http%3A%2F%2Finteraktiv.nsb.no%2F……, også etter at man er logget inn med Internet Explorer. Systemet er tilsynelatende bygget på HTTP-sesjoner, det være seg server-side eller med cookies.

I praksis blir NSB Interaktiv svært lite interaktiv, når alt du kan gjøre, er å surfe på typisk passive sider. Tjenester som MSN, IRC, bruk av nettet til fjernpålogging på servere etc, er effektivt koblet ned.

NSB har med andre ord laget noe tilsvarende en web-automat som logger alt hva du gjør, hvor du surfer, og når du gjør det. Å kalle dette for noe interaktivt, blir svært, svært feil.

Oppdatering 19. August 2011:
NSB Interaktiv fungerer nå utmerket også på Mac, og etter alle soleverker også på Linux og andre plattformer.

Last night I found this wine bar. If you walk from the city centre to Alþingi, there’s a wine bar just behind that. As mentioned earlier, there really is no reason to go to Pósthúsið, even though they call it a wine bar. Rather walk in the street on the left side of Alþingi and at the next crossing, turn left, walk 20 meters and Vínbarinn is on your right hand side. The bar is yet the most posh bar I’ve been to up here, and I was afraid this might be a problem (I’m not posh). After tasting a few wines (yes, you can actually taste the wine before deciding on a single glass, she even opened a bottle to let me taste that), I ended up tasting what she named as their most expensive wine (at least per glass). This one, the full name being Casa Lapostolle Clos Apalta 2001, was better than most wines I’ve tasted. It was very rich and tasted earth and lava and perhaps some crowberries and I don’t know. The price was 2300 krónur a glass (NOK 110 or EUR 12,70), but after tasting it, I decided it was worth it. The waitress actually asked me twice if I really wanted it. As it turned out, the bottle, which was the last, was almost empty so I got something like 2/3 of a glass for 1000 krónur. Not bad! Later, today, I tried to find it on Rikið and later Vinmonopolet without much luck, so if anyone (Hildigunnur? Jón?) knows where I can find this and who I may have kill first, please tell.

Today started with another late breakfast at Babalú. (That place is great! I know I’ve said it earlier, but it can be repeated once or twice.) After that, I went to this city walk / theatre thing. It took a little more than an hour, a walk through certain streets in town and stopping every now and then to listen to the actor that led the show. In his introduction, he asked, in Icelandic, if there were any foreigners in the crowd, which created a little laugh. He looked like a little oops came to his face, but I had raised my hand already, so he just switched language and repeated most of the intro in English. We were shepherd around town and he (the one with the microphone) stopped every now and then to tell us stories, stories I somehow doubt is in any history book around. In the house in the back, there were people posing in different settings (too bad that’s not clearly visible on the picture) and he was talking about this farm that was down the road and the insufficiency of food for the poor and that one didn’t need to eat that much, just a little, but when Famine comes around (I think that’s what he meant, it was an Icelandic word, and I’ve forgot it), you’ll die. Keeping on telling stories, walking around, we came to a small house where we went in and saw the three sisters living there (the oldest had a habit of visiting the soldiers by the docks and… uh.. so…). Then up to Laugavegur, where the actor started raving around yelling at tourists and businessmen that did what they could to hide. He kept on, yelling out how brilliant Laugavegur had always been and at this display window (no shop now, there’s an old car parked inside) he told us there had been a brilliant club or bar. There were Mannequins on display, or so it seemed at once until they started to dance crazily, and then, suddenly to stop again.

At several places, like this, other actors were placed “on view”, some about stories were told, but most without. Behind this old and rather run-down house, a princess (or what else could it be?) was posing insecurely, moving her dress around, lifting it here and there. No story was given to this, just a visual effect. Walking further, we went through a kindergarten of sorts (with three old ladies playing around like kids) where we were told how he (the actor) had had so much fun with his friend (what’s-his-name) and .. well … very nice .. at nights .. erm … we must go on… This lead us to Skólavörðstígur, where, at some stairs, a choir was singing and somehow falling asleep and then to wake up (except her that was on the bottom that looked pretty much asleep all the time). Being led futher down Skólavörðstígur, the actor started jumping around crazily, startling even more tourists and businessmen, and doing some rather nice acrobatics before suddenly stopping and changing shoes to some that were placed on a bench. Following him, him dancing down to Laugavegur like Charlie Chaplin, we were met by music, something like brass musicians trying hard to sound evil, which worked well. Then, after a little speech, we were led into the second floor (or is that first floor? up one from ground level, anyway) and given pancakes with sugar and some cakes and coffee. The place was pretty crowded and after 10 minutes or so, we were asked to go down and out the backyard, where a concert was held. Some Icelandic classics and some more. Just 3-4 songs and then, goodbye. So far, this has been a most eventful day

At this point I feel a real idiot being Norwegian today. There are hordes of drunk football supporters in town. Football supporters are bad for a start and they don’t get any better if they go to another country with half the prices for alcohol. Let’s just home Iceland wins this match - ÁFRAM ÍSLAND.

It seems the Icelandic team did a good job – Norway started out well and scored early, but Iceland took it up. Iceland was pushing all the way and would probably have won if they had played the ball better. A draw was good for Iceland and disaster for Norway, ruining their hopes for the world cup.

roy

Last night, there was a concert at Prikið, starting off with a guy from XXX Rottweiler. There were two rappers and it was quite good. I tried to take some pictures but very low light and a rapper not really standing still is no good combination. This was taken at ISO 3200, pushing the old EOS 20D far too long with the EF 10-22 at 10mm f/3,5 at 1/3 second, and this is one of the better ones. After the dogs were done, Helgi Valur and band stepped on stage. See the (external) web gallery for some pics. The pictures are all licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Back at Prikið, I met Helgi and his band and got some nice feedback for my pictures. He seemed positively surprised by the choice of license, asking me if I knew about Copyleft, and I assured him I did. We talked a little and they left to join to some TV show (as guests) later tonight. I forgot to ask which channel that was, but I watch TV every leap year or so, and my Icelandic isn’t much better than it was yesterday, so I doubt I’d bet much out of it anyway.

There’s another rather big difference between Reykjavík and perhaps the whole of Iceland as compared to Oslo/Norway. At cafés, there seems to be CCTVs everywhere, even small takeaways, perhaps excluding the toilets. Whether this is due to state regulations or just lack of laws of privacy, I don’t know. Now, surveillance increasing in Norway as well [1] [2], but mostly those are illegal ones. Surveillance in the scale of what’s being done here can’t be possible if it were illegal. Perhaps Eva Joly and her economic crime team could have had an easier job if if there were audio-enabled CCTVs installed in Alþingishúsið, but obviously that’s not how things work.

The weather forecast from yr.no is mostly wrong. They have been reporting rain for almost a week, and we’ve hardly had a drop. The temperature has dropped a little (8-9˚C now), but that doesn’t stop cafés and restaurants to leave their doors open. It’s obvious Icelanders are more used to this chill than I am (and I am Norwegian for all that takes, perhaps except for the classic blue eyes, the blond hair and the hateful look towards non-white people).

Today the Reykjavík dance festival started and tomorrow is a theatre setup, walking through town (actually it was one today as well that started 17:00, but I missed that). I guess a short trip to Kolaportið tomorrow after breakfast and then to this theatre, starting off at Laugavegi 22 (at the corner of Klapparstígur) and walking through town. After that, just relax and perhaps try to see if Prikið is showing tomorrow’s football match between Iceland and Norway. It’d be great if Iceland wan this, but I think I’ll need somewhere to hide if they do. Shouting ÁFRAM ÍSLAND around a bunch of drunk Norwegians.

roy

Incidentally, as Tor Åge Bringsværd pointed out in his book Samtaler med en svart hund (ISBN: 82-05-31127-7), the word amateur descends from the Latin word Amare, to love. In his book, Bringsværd insists that he still is an amateur, and will (hopefully) remain one since he writes for the love of writing, not for any eventual money. I cannot but agree (actually, at the age of 16 or so, I printed my first business cards and entitled myself “Amatørfotograf”, amateur photographer).

As some of you may have noticed I use different naming schemes for Icelanders and others. As I mentioned Jón Ragnarsson, a person I’ve never met, by his first name, I still write about Bringsværd with his family name. The reason is Jón, like most (but not all) Icelanders doesn’t have a family name. Iceland still keeps up the tradition of naming their children after their father’s name (or sometimes their mother’s name in case the father is unknown or if the mother or child(ren) have chosen to break contact), a patronymic or matronymic. If I were to address him by his father’s name, like most or all of international media is doing, that would be a serious insult. This also means people don’t really change name when they get married. And, yes, their phone catalog is sorted by their first name.

New gallery for today, this one in black and white, because I felt like it (or perhaps because the pictures were taken inside and I don’t like that tungsten colours, it gets dull whatever I do, so it’s better this way). Oh, by the way, the service here at Babalú is great. Glenn (left) walks around refilling coffee (and cream) and and keeps the place cozy. So, if in town, don’t just stay in Laugavegur, this is just two minutes walk up Skólavórðstigur (up towards Hallgrímskirkju).

On my way down into miðbær, a cyclist came by with studded tires – I wonder if he may have used them as all-year-tires, but then, even here, that’s not really necessary, nor is it a good idea.

Back at Prikið again, waiting for today’s offer #2, a Dion pepper steak of sorts. After 45 minutes, I asked the guy in the bar if he had slaughtered the cow yet, and he gave me a beer for free and apologized a lot. Today’s offer wasn’t too bad, were it not for the leatherish quality of the meat, so I guess it’s better to stick with simpler stuff here. As always, the service in this places certainly varies, but I still find it a nice place

Weather forecast for today from yr.no wasn’t too bad, but it seems the rest of my vacation here might be rainy.