Filip Norrgård’s blog @ filips.net
Filip’s blog about mobile technology, tech itself and other stuff

Let Google Calculator Get the Modulus for You!
25 October 2007 in How-To & Phones & Root | Comments (0)

In a math class this fall, the teacher has some difficulty calculating the modulus of a large exponential. I didn’t have my trusty Texas Instruments calculator with me at that time but tried to calculate the answer using Google on my Nokia phone. I was quite surprised to find the answer by just entering the problem directly into the search field of Google:

8^6 mod 11

or, 8 to the power of 6 modulus 11, which is congruent with 3 (if you needed to know that). This is very useful for calculating the modulus required for encryption problems such as RSA public key and Diffie-Hellman key exchange math problems and times when you don’t have MatLab, Excel or Mathematica at hand. (Or if you only have Opera Mini preloaded on your phone…)

Is Anyone Selling High Resolution Music Videos Yet?
25 October 2007 in Root | Comments (0)

It just hit me while watching a music video on YouTube that: is anyone selling high resolution music videos on the net yet? Sure, iTunes is selling some music videos (and that’s a US only feature?) but as far as I know those are not really HDTV quality like in 720p resolution.

Anyone notice some legal source of HDTV quality music videos that you can buy anywhere? If not, this might be a great business area for the BitTorrent company to move into once they’ve gotten the old farts in RIAA convinced of the business prospects…

Mythbuntu Beats Vista Media Center in PVR Usefulness
23 October 2007 in Digital Television | Comments (1)

What do you get when you combine open source MythTV personal video recorder software and open source Ubuntu? Why, it’s Mythbuntu! While it sounds like a potential next episode of Mythbusters, it is in reality the new pre-packaged, free operating system that includes MythTV for that TV viewing, recording, and time-shifting goodness that only open-source can bring you.

Sure, the graphical user interface isn’t as pretty as Windows Vista’s own Media Center has. But, Vista Media Center can’t record any broadcast copy-protected flagged TV shows (see “The Broadcast Flag Says “No Recording For You”” from Digital Media Thoughts) and it only supports a limited amount of TV tuners. Of the TV tuners, Europeans cannot use a digital cable or satellite TV tuner but only a terrestrial TV tuner with Vista.

On the other hand, with Mythbuntu all the rules Vista follows are thrown out the window. You can record and stream any TV show you like, also remove commercials automagically if that’s wanted by you. All you have to do is download the ISO disc image from Mythbuntu’s website, burn it onto a CD and install it on your TV tuning PC. (Yes, you should have a TV tuner for you PC from before.)

You might also want to make sure that the tuner is supported, but that is a bit hard since they are talking about which tuning chips are supported and not (understandibly) listing the branded tuners (as Hauppauge, Terratec, ATI) that are supported. There are supposedly lots to configure on the MythTV software side, so that is a big potential tarpit for any novice users to try (meaning, if your a newbie, take it easy with MythTV).

I haven’t tried Mythbuntu just yet, but I will try to get it running on my old, craptastic PC and see if it can do something better than Windows… like work with cable TV…

Formula 1’s Championship Drives Internet Traffic Up
22 October 2007 in Formula 1 | Comments (0)

Finnish technological newsite Digitoday.fi (in Finnish) reports that the result of Kimi Räikkönen winning the drivers championship in Formula 1 drove up Internet traffic considerably in Finland. The Finnish F1 broadcaster MTV3 has got license to broadcast the F1 races on the Internet — for a fee naturally — and apparently the ups and downs of the season’s last F1 race in Brazil with three drivers contenting for the championship crown resulted in a traffic surge on the net.

The F1 TV broadcasts in Finland have been limited to a pay-per-view live race broadcast or a later shown summary of the race on afree-to-air channel, with both channels owned by MTV3. Apparently, the season showdown was enough interesting for people to get the F1 streaming broadcasts. This eventually led to a 19.7 Gbps traffic and a new Finnish Internet traffic record.

The chairman of Ficix, an organization representing the Finnish IT communications companies, said that the record traffic wasn’t a cause for any concern for the network infrastructure in Finland. However, he thought that this serves as a warning to most communication companies that video streaming will be requiring more transfer capacity in the very near future.

MTV3 reported (in Finnish) that they had a record large viewer count on the taped summary broadcast, the pay-per-view live broadcast and also the Internet broadcast. The taped broadcast gathered at most 947 000 viewers, the pay-per-view live broadcast at most 300 000 and the Internet broadcast gathered 12 000 viewers at most. (So, that’s pretty much the whole of Finland where the population count is around 5 million. )

Seems like providing F1 broadcasts over the net can be a lucrative deal, not forgetting the pay-per-view channel which started operations this year. However, it should be noted that the sole mobile network operator providing F1 streamed to mobile phones, Telia Sonera, hasn’t reported any viewing figures yet on how the last GP weekend went.

Remains to see if this broadcasting concept will be pushed into other markets (i.e. countries) in the very near future…

Snow Surprises and Causes Crashes
12 October 2007 in Rant & Root | Comments (0)

Well, well, although the weather forecast has promised snow and minus degrees (in Celsius) for this week since last week, people are still surprised by the new snow. All Finnish news agencies and -papers have reported of multiple fender benders around southern Finland which got some snow and cold weather for today. It is amazing that people can’t seem to learn to adjust their tires and driving style to the weather, no matter what the weather forecast is promising.

But, all is not the average Joe’s fault. Finnish “temporary” tax on cars is ridiculous: it favors buying old, unsafe, CO2 spewing rust buckets with wheels rather than safer, newer, more efficient cars. Somewhat ironic is that the government cannot pre-announce any changes to the car taxation system, because the car sales are expected to plummet to zero and some car sellers may have to close up the shop. In fact, the worst part is that the tax on a car bought is 100%. Yes, you read that right. Buy two cars, get only one car. This is what the law on car taxation says, which even more ironically was supposed to be a temporary law when introduced somewhere around ten years ago.

The tax means people driving around in older cars are virtually risking their lives everytime they go out driving. Car crashes leading to death of the passengers have been increasing, and the police is saying: “Let’s put up more speed cameras!”. Yeah, since surely all the crashes are caused by speeding and not the old safety designs in what is the European Union’s oldest carpool. I even read something more evil: there is a possibility for the police to (in the near future?) measure the time it takes for a car to pass two speed cameras and calculate the time taken between the two points and deduce if the car has been speeding between the two points. So, no more overtaking slower gramps causing traffic havoc cruising too slow and creating miles of lines in their Volvos and Mercedes´ with that system in place?

I wonder if the one death that the slippery roads today caused could have been avoided if the owner had a newer car. (Of course, there is nothing safer than having brand new winter tires under the brand new car either and keeping your distance to the car in front.)

Heroes Alternative Theme Song?
10 October 2007 in Root | Comments (0)

Initially, when I first saw the posts raving the TV series “Heroes”, I wondered what kind of TV show proclaims that it is all about heroes. Fortunately Wikipedia answered my question: it isn’t a documentary nor a reality show, but a science fiction drama. The first season apparently was show in the US back in 2006 and will now start showing in Finland on October 17th on MTV3 this year (2007).

Interestingly, for the TV ads for Heroes series start in Finland, MTV3 used a local band as the song for the show: mixing and integrating the original Heroes theme song into Poets of the Fall’s “Locking Up the Sun” song. Perhaps coincidentally, the PotF song is from their 2nd album also released in 2006, and it contextually touches the Heroes TV series plot, at least as far as I can deduct from the articles on the show in Wikipedia. Here is a quote from the chorus in the song (the lyrics are available on the band’s website):

Is there a hero somewhere, someone who appears and saves the day
Someone who holds out a hand and turns back time
Is there a hero somewhere, someone who will never walk away
Who doesn’t turn a blind eye to a crime

People who have seen the show, or read the spoilers in Wikipedia will understand that the show and the song’s lyrics fits together like a glove (unless we’re talking about OJ’s glove).

Somewhat funny is that someone has made a fan tribute video on YouTube with the same song played over the Heroes opening credits. People should note that this was about half a year before MTV3 started airing their commercials for the show, which might indicate (although highly unlikely) that someone at MTV3 has also seen the clip on YouTube. (You can see the video below)

And, yeah, this is a shameless plug for the band from my side, as I’m a fan of the band.

Analog Television Is Soon Dead; Long Live Digital TV!
27 August 2007 in Root | Comments (0)

Finland is about to take a final big step into the digital (TV) era, as only 4, yes 4, days of analog television broadcasting remains today. On the 1st of September 2007, Finland will only be broadcasting television in the digital DVB format. Some cable subscribers might have gotten an extension on getting a digital television or set-top box, since the cable providers are allowed to send some digital channels as analog for a short time into the future. However, the terrestrial TV viewers will have to have a digital TV or set-top box working this Saturday or they will be only watching “The War of the Ants” ad infinitum.

Getting a total of 30 channels (not counting some regional TV channels) of new terrestrial channels, is a big change to the 4 or 5 analog channels we had before. I’m looking forward to watching some new pay-TV channels like the Discovery Channel and MTV Finland using just a simple terrestrial reciever in the very near future.

Some people, however, are not as happy. Most antenna professionals are fully booked for this week and next as people have been late out with getting ready (as can be expected). Lots of digital set-top boxes are being sold like no tomorrow, and some more optimal antennas are also being ripped from the hands of electornics retailers. And some people are not getting any digital TV picture at all, or crappy such.

Fact is that too many people have 1) bought a cheap digibox which does a crappy job at recieving low signal strenghts and might not even support some of the Finnish Broadcasting Company’s subtitling (ironically as the subtitles used by FBC is standardized) 2) are using a cheap log-periodic antenna which can do a resonably good job at recieving analog TV (in the VHF region) but not the digital TV (in the UHF region). Futhermore, as digital TV broadcasts use channel-wise less bandwidth than the analog TV, the signal quality for the digital TV can rapidly worsen when using an unefficient antenna or when in a bad coverage area with an insufficient antenna.

Although people have been informed that they should get prepared for the digital era and what they can do if the picture quallity is bad, many have left this to the last seconds or just given up claiming that the “digital is crap”. I guess this is what everyone can expect of changes that require some little work from one’s own side; we Finns are wanting more efficiency that makes it more easy — not harder — for us to live our daily lives. Much like the current tax forms we get prefilled out and if everthings a-OK, we do not have to do anything. If there’s anything to correct, then one just has to correct the incorrect details and send it in before the deadline.

How Often Should INFCACHE Go Corrupt?
21 August 2007 in Root | Comments (0)

I’ve been running Vista since January and nowadays it will not install any driver properly until I’ve deleted the INFCACHE file. Before deleting it, Windows cannot find the driver although the driver is supposed to be included with Windows. After deleting the file, Windows finds the driver fast as a Ferrari… which really makes the cache idea look bad.

AnySee Tuners Works in Mysterious Ways
9 August 2007 in Code-ing | Comments (0)

If the source I read is correct, then it seems like the AnySee tuners really work in mysterious ways.

Regular DVB tuners have a Common Interface (CI) that is in some cases used together with an additional encryption card (Conax, Viaccess) and a subscriber card can decode a digital TV signal on-the-fly. The result (except an empty wallet) is an almost transparent decoding process for the digital TV software like MediaPortal or ProgDVB.

AnySee is sold in Finland as an integrated digital TV tuner with combined Conax card decoder all-in-one, but it doesn’t work in the above scenario. The same AnySee USB digital TV tuner can be used with virtually any encryption technology (in theory) that uses a smart card for pay-TV subscribers. The only thing you will need to change is the AnySee software when you change encryption technology. So, to make it short, the AnySee plus models are infact digital TV tuners with integrated smart card reader.

According to the source, AnySee has licensed the technology for Conax encryption (amongst others) and uses a software-based Conax card access module (or SoftCAM) to decode the encrypted TV channels in the AnySee TV software. This is also a reason for why AnySee will (or cannot) give out a SDK for the AnySee tuners. This in turn means that MediaPortal and ProgDVB plus the Linux DVB driver community cannot use the AnySees to the fullest potential. Granted, from what I’ve seen in the MediaPortal forums, it seems like the lead developer will sooner or later have to re-include the SoftCAM feature soon, if they are going to support AnySee and Hauppauge’s external USB CI reader.

Anyways, it is probably quite easy for anyone with the law on their side to reverse engineer the USB protocol the AnySees use to read the smartcards. The problem might be getting it working automagically with MediaPortal and on other platforms. Fortunately, this is not my problem… I’ll just stick to the slow, buggy, AnySee TV tuner program…

Source [Min Hem Bio forums]

Nokia’s N81 Coming Soon?
2 August 2007 in Phones | Comments (0)

Kevin C. Tofel over at JkOnTheRun found this interesting website in an Google ad: http://www.070829.com/

From the looks of the date in the URL, it would seem like the Nokia N81 will be announced and/or released (maybe…?) on the 29th of August this year. However, the countdown seems to indicate another date in the same week… or I’m just not counting it the right way.

Here’s the link to an image of the Nokia N81: http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/10/nokia-n81-and-n82-come-to-light/

I’m really hoping that the N81 will have A2DP Bluetooth profile and the rumored 8GB flash memory, since my N91 didn’t have A2DP and the integrated hard disk can be somewhat slow with Nokia Maps at times…

Whatever happens, we’ll probably hear more quite soon…