pyWeightWatch: Monitor your Weight Efficiently

Note:

The project page has moved: http://david-web.appspot.com/cnt/WeightWatch/

Consider the information on this page deprecated.

Installation:

Just unpack the .exe in a directory, then run pyWeight.exe.

The program is going to ask you how much you weight now. Jump on a scale and enter your weight.

The program will automatically generate a graph of your weight over time.




This is what the program generates for me:

Usage:

Enter today's weight and see the graph/save to .png:
pyWeight.exe
Just update the .png file with the data contained in Weight.xml:
pyWeight.exe -u
pyWeight.exe --update

Download:

pyWeightWatch v1.0 (source here)

Future features:

-Interpolation and prediction
-Better labelling
-XML indexed by date and weight, should extract all weightelement and then extract the weight and date.
-Leave some space in graph (not just the extremum of the data)
-Build Weight.xml if not present/valid

[Generated at: 2007_09_02_14h21m16s]

ScreenSpy: New Release V1.1

You can download it here:

ScreenSpy v1.1 (Win, Unix, MacOS) -- Includes source code.

ScreenSpy v1.0 (Win, Unix, MacOS) -- Includes source code.

Usage:

   java -jar ScreenSpy.jar ftp.domain.com username password 1000

   or, for the win32 .exe:

   Screenspy.exe ftp.domain.com username password 1000
  
   This would start sending the screenshots to "ftp.domain.com" once every second.

Changes:

V 1.1:

-Smarter naming of pictures (for example: Thu_Aug_30_06-57-19_.jpg)

-Always delete the file on exit. X

-Option to select the amount of time in between screenshots.



V 1.0:

-Initial release





It will run on all major platforms give you have a java virtual machine installed (www.java.com). I also included a win32 binary.



Have fun!

[Generated at: 2007_08_30_07h41m06s]

Draw simple graphs with DOT

A quick and painless way to generate directed and undirected graphs under windows / Linux.
The DOT language is useful because it can be easily generated by a script and hence can be used to automatically generate documentation.
It is also useful to quickly draw a professional looking graph without having to use a graphical interface.

Example:

Here is a simple graph:


Do you get it? Visit my blog often and you will never need time or ideas again to solve your problems!

Here is the .dot script that generated the graph.

Source Code: [File=Graph.dot]

digraph G
{
Computer -> David;
Problem -> David;
Time -> David;
Idea -> David;

{rank=same; Problem; Idea; David; Computer; Time;}

David -> Blog;
Problem -> You;
Blog -> You [dir=both, color=lawngreen, style = bold];
You -> Solve;

You [shape=box]
Problem [shape=tripleoctagon, color = red, style=filled, fillcolor=yellow]
David [label = "David Malin", shape=box]
Blog [label = "davidmaling.blogspot.com", shape=diamond, fontsize=15, color=steelblue3]
}

The following command will compile the .dot file into a png image:

dot -Tpng -O Graph.dot

Neat no? The program (dot) can be obtained here:
http://graphviz.org/

You can read the wikipedia entry about dot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOT_language

... or download a more complete documentation here:
http://graphviz.org/Documentation/dotguide.pdf

Graph on!

P.S: Send me your home-made graph and I will post it on the blog. :)

[Generated at: 2007_08_21_01h34m18s]

pyScreenSpy, a Python implementation using Java libraries & JPython

I love Python, I dislike Java. But Java is maintained by a large corporation and has some tools that Python does not. It is possible to write a program in Python, using Python's core library and Java's library in the same program and compile it in a Java bytecode executable. All you need is to download and setup JPython. Here are the implications of developing a program using JPython:

Advantages:

• Use both Java's and Python's libraries seamlessly in the same program.
• Will work on all platforms that Java works.

Disadvantages:

• Java's virtual machine is long to load (~3sec compared to Python's ~0.1 sec)
• Some functionalities of Java and of Python are not available in JYthon, and the documentation about that is not very good.

As an example, I re-coded parts of the JScreenSpy application that I published a few days ago using JPython in 21 lines. This is just an example, I will re-release a fully working and ameliorated version (1.1) of JScreenSpy in Python in the following days.

Here is the source file, you can execute it using jpython pyScreenSpy.py

#Pythons imports
import os

#Java Imports
from javax import imageio
from java import awt
from java.awt import image
from java import io

#Determine current screen size
toolkit = awt.Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
screenSize = toolkit.getScreenSize();
screenRect = awt.Rectangle(screenSize);

#Create screenshot
robot = awt.Robot();

#Take ScreenShot
image = robot.createScreenCapture(screenRect);
imageio.ImageIO.write(image, "jpg", io.File("test.jpg") );

21 lines, in Python, using Java's libraries. How cool is that? Very!

Easily Encode your Videos / DVDs with MPlayer/Mencoder

This entry will show you how to easily encode videos with MPlayer / Mencoder. MPlayer is a good, free, open-source, cross platform player / encoder that can make a local copy of your DVDs and transcode your videos to a format your embedded player (iPod, Cowon D2, ...) can read.

Video Codecs:

First, I have to talk a little bit about video codecs. In a nutshell, there are two main formats in which you should consider encoding your videos:

1. Xvid: Free and open source, widely used, your dvd player can probably read/play the transcoded video files.

2. H.264 ~30% more efficient than Xvid, but not yet widely spread. You should probably not use this format yet unless you do not care about being able to read the files on your dvd player. I do not recommend this format, but it is the one I use for my personnal video library :P.

You can get MPlayer/Mencoder for your platform here.

Commands:

These commands will encode / rip the video files into the Xvid format. To use other formats, please refer to the Mencoder documentation.

[For Windows] Once Mplayer / Mencoder is installed, go into the directory that contains the Mencoder.exe binary.

The you can use the following commands:

Normal Encode:

resize video (fixed):
mencoder input.avi -o output.avi −vf scale=500:375 -oac copy -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=1500

encoding video using mencode:
mencoder input.avi -o output.avi -oac lavc -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=1500
mencoder input.avi -o output.avi -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=1500
mencoder input.avi -o output.avi -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mjpeg:vbitrate=4000

join multiples files:
mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -idx -o output.avi *.avi
or
cat a.avi b.avi > all.avi
(and then:)
mencoder -forceidx -oac copy -ovc copy all.avi -o all_final.avi

build slideshow from .jpg:
mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf fps=0.2 -vf scale=640:480 -o output.avi -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=1500

Rip DVDs:

keep original (mpeg-2) encoding:
mencoder dvd://1 -dvd-device D: -o out.avi -oac copy -ovc copy

orig.size, with compression:
mencoder dvd://1 -dvd-device D: -o out.avi -oac lavc -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=1500

resizing, with keeping aspect ratio (572 x abc):
mencoder dvd://1 -dvd-device D: -o out.avi −vf scale −zoom −xy 572 -oac lavc -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=1500

resizing, with keeping aspect ratio and reducing framerate:
mencoder dvd://1 -dvd-device D: -ofps 23 -o out.avi -vf scale -zoom -xy 320 -oac lavc -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=2000
mencoder dvd://1 -dvd-device D: -ofps 23 -o out.avi −vf scale −zoom −xy 572 -oac lavc -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=1500

resizing, force 640x480:
mencoder dvd://1 -dvd-device D: -o out.avi −vf scale=640:480 -oac lavc -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=1500

Misc:
If you get error messages about the audio compression, just replace "-oac copy" by "-oac lavc" or "-oac mp3ame"