Uly.me

cloud engineer

Misc

Optimize Your Videos For The Web

If you have a video that you would like to share with others, how do you optimize it for the web. I’m using a simple open-source program called Handbrake which you can download for free. It’s available from handbrake.fr. Handbrake is available on Windows, Mac and Linux. Based on my experience with working with Handbrake, I was able to shrink my videos to less than 10% of the original size without sacrificing quality.

Here’s a short video of how to optimize your videos for the web using Handbrake.

Video

Remove CleanMyMac

Several months ago, I’ve installed an app called CleanMyMac. Big mistake. I didn’t like it much. I deleted it shortly after. The uninstall didn’t quite exactly remove everything. This morning, I updated my computer with the latest Mac updates. It required a reboot. Sure enough, the CleanMyMac notifications came back. Apparently, there’s some pieces of the app that are still running on my machine.

The only way I was able to delete anything related to the CleanMyMac app was to use a couple of tools. One is called Find Any File, a handy utility for finding obscure files in your OS. The other is the handy tool called the Terminal. Start with the Find Any File app and search for files that contain the words “CleanMyMac” and “macaw.” The Find Any File app will show you a list of files and their locations. You should be able to delete the files directly from the app. However, there are some files that are write-protected. They can be deleted using a sudo account on the Terminal.

Open up your Terminal and start deleting the files using “sudo rm” command. You’ll be ask to provide the admin password. Don’t forget to empty the Trash.

That should do the trick.

The Latest Speed Test

I recently switched to Comcast for my Internet services. It has been several years since I have left and abandoned Comcast. I was curious more than anything as to what kind of download speeds I’ll be getting now that I’m back to using broadband cable. The result is pretty impressive. It has been a while since I’ve seen this kind of speeds at home. It’s about 4-5 times faster than what I previously had. I ran 3 different speed tests from 3 different sources. I’m a little surprised the results were similar. All fell within the same range of one another. So, without much further ado, here are the results of the speed tests.

Comcast Speed Test

speedtest

Speakeasy

speakeasy

Speedtest

speedtest-net

Heatsink and Modem

My DSL router/modem is failing miserably. My Internet connection slows down to a crawl. Pinging a host online takes twice as long. Resetting the router/modem fixes the problem temporarily, but only for a couple of hours, then it’s back to its slow crawl.

Rummaging through my stash of electronics, I found an old DSL modem that I put away years ago. There’s a reason why it’s in the electronic pile. It has problems with overheating as I recall. Desperate for a fix. I pried off the heatsink from an old motherboard, and placed it on top of the overheating chip on the modem.

heatsink2

Well, after 12 hours of operation, so far, so good. Surprisingly, the heatsink is still quite warm to the touch. I don’t know how Motorola failed see the heating issues with this particular model. Anyways, I can’t replace the modem cover because the heatsink is way too big. Suffice to say, the modem cover looks nicely as a stand.

Heatsink and modem, just like the horse and carriage.

The Raspberry Pi Works

My Raspberry Pi finally arrived yesterday, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting. I ordered it October 24. It was shipped November 20 and arrived on my doorstep November 29. That’s over a month! I had a few hours to play around with it. The first thing I did was placed the Raspberry Pi inside an Adafruit Rainbow Pibow enclosure that I’ve ordered several weeks back. It looks amazing. Here’s it is.

Once it was inside the Pibow enclosure, I downloaded the Raspberry image called Raspbian Wheezy. I loaded it to an old 4GB SD card that originally came with my Nikon D90 camera. Once the image was loaded, I inserted the SD card, connected a USB keyboard, a USB mouse, and a HDMI cable.

On a side note, I’m currently using a 5v 750ma USB adapter, which I know is sufficient, but the Raspberry Pi needs more ooomp with multiple USB devices connected to it. They recommend that you have at least a 5v 1amp power adapter.

Finally, I powered the Raspberry Pi. A blank screen! Not good. It turned out to be just a resolution issue. I ended up plugging my Raspberry Pi to my old TV, via a RCA composite cable. It worked, although a good portion of the screen was clipped. I started the GUI, then accessed the Terminal and changed the screen resolution from there.

I found this page with instructions how to change Raspberry Pi to 1680×1050 resolution.

Edit the /boot/config.txt file.

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Add the following code to the end of the file. 58 is for screens with a 1680×1050 resolution.

hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=58

Reboot.

sudo reboot

My monitor works! All 1680×1050 pixels. I ran an update next by issuing the following commands.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

This process takes a good 20 minutes. Finally, I installed Apache. 

sudo apt-get install apache2

Once installed. I checked if the web server works. It does.

ATX Bench Power Supply

I have several old computers with perfectly working power supplies. I decided to convert one of them into into a bench power supply. Typically, a bench power supply can cost anywhere from $100-200 dollars or more, depending on brand and quality of equipment. With this modified ATX bench power supply, it cost me only $20 and about 3 hours of project work.

This ATX bench power supply gives me 3 different voltages at 3.3, 5 and 12 volts. The voltages are rated at 18, 12 and 21 amps respectively. I didn’t bother using the -5 and -12 volts since the amperage on these two voltages are very low. The only downside to this power supply is the voltages are fixed. It would have been nice to have an adjustable voltages.

It was a fun little project. I won’t bother posting the instructions since many people have already covered this topic. Here are two good sources worth checking: JumperOneTV and GeoNoJRJ.

Parts total at around $20

  • Binding Posts
  • Power switch
  • Lamp assembly
  • 10 ohm 10 watt load resistor
  • Heat shrink
  • Cable ties
  • Rubber feet

Cloud Journal

Herein are a few things I learned as a cloud engineer. Hope you find this website helpful.