paywall h3g

Se recentemente avete provato ad accedere sotto rete 3 ai siti di Corriere della Sera e Repubblica ottimizzati per iPhone avrete sicuramente trovato un avviso simile a quello sulla destra. Quello che vedete e’ un paywall risultato degli accordi tra gli editori e il carrier H3G.

Se come me vi siete un po’ sorpresi del fatto, perche’ e’ un po’ come se Telecom Italia vi facesse pagare oltre alla sottoscrizione ADSL anche ogni singola pagina che visitate, c’e’ una economica soluzione per scavalcare il paywall. O almeno cosi’ mi sembra.

Il metodo descritto funziona solamente tramite iPhone, ma il principio e’ lo stesso per qualsiasi altro telefono.

Innanzi tutto vi dovete procurare una copia di Atomic Web Browser per il modico prezzo di 0.79 euro. Una volta ottenuto il nuovo e francamente portentoso browser potrete impostare il medesimo in modo che si identifichi come Safari Desktop e non come Safari Mobile. In questo modo otterrete la pagina standard dei due quotidiani.

Certo perderete il fascino della versione per dispositivi mobile ma eviterete di pagare 9 centesimi a pagina!

Update: anche utilizzando Opera Mini scaricabile gratuitamente e’ possibile scavalcare il paywall.

Via @sukkopera: C’è anche un’alternativa, totalmente gratuita, per chi ha un dispositivo jailbreakato: basta installare da Cydia lo UserAgent Faker, che farà sì che Safari si identifichi come Firefox su desktop!

The only thing to do was change it. Off I went to ifixit.com and I bought a new fan with a couple of other things also, a new battery and a new superdrive since mine failed to calibrate the laser power. The invoice was pretty expensive (107$ for shipping ARG)! Warning: This procedure voids the warranty.

So off we go with changing the fan. To open your MacBook Pro you’ll need a small cross screwdriver and a torx 6 screwdriver, while you’re there you’ll also might want to clean the other fan of just the inside with compressed air.

Open your mac by unscrewing the screws on the back, the bottom, the left side, the right side, the ones in the RAM compartment (torx 6 there) and the ones in the battery compartment towards the front of the mac. Once you unscrewed everything gently remove the top cover by inserting a flat head screwdriver in the gap between the body and the top panel and turn the screwdriver vertical, lift gently but don’t pull or you’ll break your keyboard. Disconnect the keyboard connector by lifting it before removing completely the top panel.

Now unscrew the screws circled in the picture below. Don’t remove the one on the right holding the speaker part together, just unscrew it. Remove the power supply cable of the fan by pushing is out (it’s a bit hard) and the connecting cable the crosses over the fan by lifting the two brown end, the cable will just slip out from underneath the ends.

It’s time to remove the yellow tape where needed and lift the other cables that cross over the fan. Now cut with a pen knife the black tape holding the fan to the air gird, it’s just need so the air doesn’t blow trough the gap. Lift the fan up and pull towards you, it’s a bit hard because the fan is glued to the floor, but don’t worry you won’t break anything keep pulling until it comes off.

You may now want to clean the air shaft before inserting the new fan as it gets cluttered bad with dust, use your compressed air for this.

Insert your new fan and put some black pate to cover the gap between the fan and the air shaft as it was when you opened your Mac. Screw back the part where the speaker is, connect the fan to the power and connect back the connecting cable removed before. 

And you’re done! That’s it! I will now continue explaining how to change the superdrive unit.

I assume your mac is open. Unscrew as shown in figure, then gently lift a bit and pull towards you. Gently so you don’t break the superdrive connector. Now unscrew from the old superdrive the metallic supports and screw them on the new unit.

 Screw everything back in palce and you’re done! Happy new mac!

Leave a comment if you found this useful ( you don’t need to register and you can just put a fake email address) !

Sometimes I forget how to make the most simple knot, especially if it’s been a while since the last time a wore one, or for a change I like to try out different knots. I always end up looking on the Internet.

Yesterday I wanted to try a new knot and I came across this image, I think it pretty served my needs and maybe it could be useful for others too. Just pay attention to the arrows going over or under the dead end of the tie. After the jump a video explaining the windsor knot.

UPDATE: A even more detailed tutorial for 8 knots after the jump!

 Link to the 8 knots tutorial: http://www.bensilver.com/style04/knots_windsor.htm

•  Select the image you want to include from a webpage (so that it becomes highlighted)
• Copy to clipboard (ctrl+c , cmd+c, right click…)
• Switch to gmail
• Enable rich formatting
• Paste (ctrl+v, cmd+v, right click…)
• You’re done!

The image will be embedded in html code now, on gmail you’ll be able to view it by selecting for received images Display images below

• To synchronize means that no matter with which client (iCal o Google Calendar) changes are made on the calendar it is possible to see and edit the changes with another client, it’s bidirectional
• To publish means that changes can be made by one client only. The other client can only view the changes made, no editing is possible

Thus the scenario is: I have one or more calendars on iCal that I want to also see on Google Calendar without updating by hand or importing the calendar file each update I make to the events What do you need: iCal, Google Calendar account, icalx.com account. Let’s proceed by steps. 

• Create an account on icalx.com
• Access you account page and note the url at the bottom, something like http://icalx.com/public/youraccount/
• Open iCal, select the calendar you want to publish on you Google Calendar, right click and choose publish

• Select a Private Server form the Publish on drop down menu
• Fill in Base URL with the url you took note of before
• Fill in Login and Password with your icalx.com account name and password
• Click Publish 

• Logon icalx.com, you should see in the list of your calendar the calendar you have just added
• Move your mouse the the .ics link referring to your calendar and note the url 

• Logon your Google Calendar account
• Go to settings
• Press the Add Calendar Button

• On the new page select the Add by url tab 
• Paste in the address of you calendar that you should have noted a few steps ago
• You’re done!

 Whenever you’ll make changes with iCal to the published calendar they will reflect on Google Calendar too!

Del.icio.us (pronounced as “delicious”) is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.

Social what? Wikipedia again:

In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share….[cut]…Additionally, as people bookmark resources that they find useful, resources that are of more use are bookmarked by more users. Thus, such a system will “rank” a resource based on its perceived utility.

Let’s say you want to search for free fonts, in most of Google’s first page results I believe you won’t find much that suites your needs. Give del.icio.us a try!Anyway I think the search form in Del.icio.us front page should be made more evident

• sox – Sound eXchange
• libvorbis
• libogg
• lame

and just$ sox file.ogg file.mp3or in batch mode for all files in a dir$ for x in * ; do mv "$x" `echo -n $x | tr " " "_"`; done$ for x in *.ogg ; do sox $x `echo $x|awk -F . '{print $1 ".mp3"}'`; done

ffmpeg -y -i input_file.avi -an -v 1 -threads auto -vcodec h264 -b 500k -bt 175k -refs 1 -loop 1 -deblockalpha 0 -deblockbeta 0 -parti4x4 1 -partp8x8 1 -me full -subq 1 -me_range 21 -chroma 1 -slice 2 -bf 0 -level 30 -g 300 -keyint_min 30 -sc_threshold 40 -rc_eq ‘blurCplx^(1-qComp)’ -qcomp 0.7 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -i_qfactor 0.71428572 -maxrate 768k -bufsize 2M -cmp 1 -s 320×240 -f mp4 -pass 1 /dev/null

ffmpeg -y -i input_file.avi -v 1 -threads auto -vcodec h264 -b 500k -bt 175k -refs 1 -loop 1 -deblockalpha 0 -deblockbeta 0 -parti4x4 1 -partp8x8 1 -me full -subq 6 -me_range 21 -chroma 1 -slice 2 -bf 0 -level 30 -g 300 -keyint_min 30 -sc_threshold 40 -rc_eq 'blurCplx^(1-qComp)' -qcomp 0.7 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -i_qfactor 0.71428572 -maxrate 768k -bufsize 2M -cmp 1 -s 320x240 -acodec aac -ab 96 -ar 48000 -ac 2 -f mp4 -pass 2 output_file.mp4

 ffmpeg -y -i input_file.avi -v 1 -threads auto -vcodec h264 -b 500k -bt 175k -refs 1 -loop 1 -deblockalpha 0 -deblockbeta 0 -parti4x4 1 -partp8x8 1 -me full -subq 6 -me_range 21 -chroma 1 -slice 2 -bf 0 -level 30 -g 300 -keyint_min 30 -sc_threshold 40 -rc_eq 'blurCplx^(1-qComp)' -qcomp 0.7 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -i_qfactor 0.71428572 -maxrate 768k -bufsize 2M -cmp 1 -s 320x240 -acodec libfaac -ab 96 -ar 48000 -ac 2 -f mp4 -pass 2 output_file.mp4 

Edit: second command was wrong at least on gentoo, the -acodec was unknown. Replace acc with libfaac instead, make sure you have acc in the USE flag for ffmpegSettings do work!

 Run the first command and then the second for a multipass encoding

 Please leave a comment if it also works for you! (no registration or real email needed)