Now from my phone and laptop, no matter where I am I can easily added torrents to my home utorrent. And the awesome part is this isn’t just limited to utorrent! I am also going this on a headless ubuntu server running rtorrent. Dope little set up.

scp [from path] [to path]

scp bardic@mediaserver ~/

Hope it helps!

1. Download as3corelib : http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/
2. Sign up with bit.ly : http://bit.ly/account/register?rd=/
3. That’s pretty much it….


import com.adobe.serialization.json.JSON

var login:String = "put your bit.ly login here";
var api:String = "put your bit.ly api key here. It's on your account details page";
var url:String = escape("the url you want to shorten");
var bitly:String = "http://api.bit.ly/shorten?version=2.0.1&longUrl="+url+"&login="+login+"&apiKey=" + api;

var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, completeHandler);
loader.load(new URLRequest(bitly));

function completeHandler(ev:Event):void
{
var bitlyObj:Object = JSON.decode(ev.target.data);
var o:Object = bitlyObj.results[url];
if(bitlyObj.statusCode == "OK")
{
trace("Success! Short URL is : " + bitlyObj.results[url].shortUrl);
}
}


That’s pretty much it. I didn’t write my error handling yet, but it’s pretty simple. Just trace out ev.target.data to see the JSON structure in case you need more details ^^

Hope it helps

*Updated to add the escape to the URL.

I really can’t be the only person out there that has a hard time dealing with people. Others must be the same. Others must not want to talk to people, be it on the phone or in person. Other must also want to avoid conflict, even if it comes at a personal loss. Others. The thing I’m afraid off. I dunno what it is about people that make be want to stay at home, or that make me so angry. Why can’t they see? Maybe it’s just me that can’t see? But either way, I’m pissed about it. Is it really that difficult to be a consider person, to keep your word, to not only ever look out for number one?

This is my main problem with society. It’s one for one. It’s almost never all for one, or one for all. No one give’s a shit about anything but themselves. And this is why I avoid conflict. Because I don’t want to start arguing with people that are only looking out for themselves. Because no matter no sound your logic is, those fuckwads will bend it to fit their twisted sense that everything in the world revolves around them.

And it’s these thoughts of people constantly looking out for themselves that make me depressed. Or at least a large part of it. How can you trust someone that only looks out for themselves? How can you tell when they really care or just using you? (this is in no way directed at my girlfriend in case she ends up reading this… which is unlikely).

I dunno. I can’t be the only one. There has to be others out there that care for more than just themselves. But here is the kicker. I’m too afraid of dealing with people to find out.

Oh well. Fuck it. I’ll just live with my depression caused by my perception of society. At least I won’t bother anyone since I can’t stand dealing with them…

Lately, I have been using Deluge torrent on my windows xp box instead of uTorrent for pretty much just two reasons: It’s open source and I can squeeze just slightly faster speeds out of it.

So, let’s take a quick look :

Interface:

These one is pretty close, but I’ll have to give it to utorrent since it’s skinable, otherwise they are almost the same

Features:

These one again is pretty close. uTorrent has a few more advanced features but deluge can handle plugins (but none really exist…). Plus deluge has a bitchin’ feature to run the daemon on one pc and the interface on another. I haven’t tested this, but I’ve been meaning to. So I’m gonna call this one a draw with the future potential going to Deluge

Speed:

I get just slightly faster/consistent speeds with deluge. Not enough for an average user to switch but something for those that are looking for every ounce of speed to maybe check out.

Bugs

This one goes to Deluge. They are buggier than utorrent but I really only found this on windows since it’s a port.

Platforms

Deluge is available for all major OS’s. uTorrent on the other hand is just windows. It can be ran using Wine on linux though. But I’m gonna give this to Deluge.

Source

Deluge is open source which is the decided factor here for me. If I can, I will always choose open source.

So there’s a quick comparison. Maybe sometime I’ll do a more in depth one with a few more clients but don’t hold you’re breathe

If you don’t know what Red5 is here’s a snippet from Wikipedia that explains the basic idea:

Red5 is considered as a free alternate to Adobe Flash Media Server, and supports many of the same feature sets. It has a few additional feature sets such as the ability to intercept live streams, and the ability to easily plug in other Java libraries such as Hibernate.

So, my first attempt was to use tomcat, but that didn’t work so so well, and since I have a wamp server already running I figured it would be best to use that. After some googling  I found other people that had already done this, on the  Red5 mailing list , here.

Pretty much I’m just gonna copy their nine steps and add my additional comments since their way works, it’s just a little vague though.

1. Install wamp
2. Create a directory named “red5-server” into C:wampwww
3. Download and install TortoiseSVN
4. right-click on C:wampwwwred5-server folder and click SVNCheckout
5. enter  the url from which red5-server will be downloaded : http://red5.googlecode.com/svn/java/server/trunk
6. download ant from the apache software foundation (manage dependencies for compilation)
7. Extract ant to a folder where ever you want. Just remember it’s path since you will need to add it to your system variables later. I put it at : C:apache-ant-1.7.1
8. Download the JDK 6 and install
9. Add ant and javac.exe to your system’s Path variable (right click on my computer – > Advanced – > Enviroment Variables – > Find variable Path in System Variables and edit. You need to add the path to the javac.exe which is in your JDK installation (default on xp for me : C:Program FilesJavajdk1.6.0_14bin) and the bat files for ant (C:apache-ant-1.7.1bin) . Make sure that each variable is separated by a semi colon or it won’t work.)
10. open a shell on C:wampwwwred5-server
11. just type ant server – if ant is not found your system variables are set up wrong. If during building it says that it can’t find tools.jar where it expected the easiest solution is to find where the tools.jar file is on your pc and copy it to where the ant expects it. If at the end of the build it says it can’t find javac.exe, you either installed the wrong version of java or your system vars are set up wrong.
12. You can install samples demo via the administration console http://localhost/RED5-server/webapps/installer/index.html

And there ya go -Red5 through your wamp installation.

I’m hoping to keep this going as it was in the past : focus on tech, software, code and random nerdy things/thoughts.  Will hopefully also be posting some as3 and php up here as well as software comparisons.

So if you liked my old shit, check back. I will try to be a little more active ^^

All I want my music player to do is to play music. That it’s. i don’t give a shit about visuals or stores, or podcasts, or internet radio, or ipod support, or whatever. All it has to do is play music, cd’s and rip them if I for ever some reason have a cd.

So how did things turn out?

Well I installed the latest version of winamp and itunes.  Winamp 5.33 and iTunes 7.3

In Winamp I literally removed every plugin that isn’t needed to play my library or rip/burn cds.  In iTunes I turned off every feature but the library. I didn’t delete anything because the preferences didn’t give me the option like Winamp does.

I stat again I did not hack or did anything to change the configs other than use the options available to me through the preferences.

Anyways, Winamp’s memory usage sits between 6000k-20000k which is pretty good for a media player.

iTunes, after installing and turning of all the features used 44000k.  And when you add all the other crap processes it runs, updater, devices and I dunno what else, it was over 55000k mem usage.

Obviously I choose to keep my Winamp installation.

If you purely want to listen to music through a library, Winamp is your best bet. If you want only to listen to playlists, you may want to consider foobar, but!!! it just as much (and more if skinned) than Winamp.

You could also consider Evilplayer but I wouldn’t. No id3 tag support, no way in hell I’m using it.

So there ya go. Winamp wins hands down if you ONLY want to listen to music. If you want to buy songs (pff) then iTunes may be useful. Don’t even mention ipods. I have an ipod and I run the software from the ipod. I can run it on anyones Win installation. If ya have a mac you have iTunes so no worries there.

Oh, btw, I am obliviously talking about all Windows software here.

I am going to try to hack iTunes a little and see what I can do. I have nothing against mac. I use a mac at work and I rather enjoy it. But I am looking at things in a purely functionality/memory usage point of view. Take my word or not, makes no difference to me. Sorry if I sound kinda rude but I got slammed for my last review because Winamp won then too and that was without configuring and I just want to make sure people don’t bitch that I’m a fanboy or anything. I will switch music players if you can show me a better one.

Here’s there script (link). It uses a pretty simple XML also.

<song>
<t st=”songtitle” l=”url” a=”artist” />
</song>

Give it a whirl. I will be trying to remake it with a slider on the next version and make it smaller.