Peter Hoeg

Did my duty when it comes to Free software and reported a bug with the deluge torrent project.

http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/ticket/805

Was struggling with an unbelievably annoying error, where PDF::Writer (or pdf-writer as it’s also called) simply refused to show special accented characters incl the Euro sign, but presented garbage instead. Turns out that as of pdf-writer 1.1.8, the following is the case:

a) No, it doesn’t accept utf-16, despite what it claims
b) Feeding it utf-8, will look fine for what can be mapped to 7bit ASCII
c) Feeding it Win-1252 seems to do the trick, although some people claim it’s also hit and miss.

In your class doing the PDF generation, add a method like this:

def to_pw(text = '')
  return Iconv.conv('win-1252', 'utf-8', text)
end

And then call that to output all the text.

YMMV, but it worked for me.

Best wishes for 2009.

Started a page on help.ubuntu.com to outline the troubleshooting process when fonts in OpenOffice.org aren’t exactly working properly on Ubuntu.

You can find it here.

Feel free to leave comments here or even better, improve the guide directly on help.ubuntu.com.

While China was doing DVB-T trial in 2006, my understanding is that they have developed their own standard and chosen to go ahead with that instead. The standard, DMB-T/H, is unfortunately incompatible with existing DVB-T equipment which means that my WinTV-HVR1200 which worked flawlessly in Singapore is completely useless in Shanghai.

This wikipedia post seems to indicate that China broadcasts in both standards in Shanghai, although that is definitely not what I have experienced. If anybody can shed some light on the situation, that would be appreciated.

Spent a little time getting DVB-T to working in Singapore and while I managed to pick up the FTA channels, I don’t know if any of the pay channels would work.

You can put the following snippers into $HOME/.tzap/channels.conf and symlink to it from the relevant program directories.

The following free channels work(ed) for me as of 2008-08-01 in Tiong Bahru.

Digital 5:538000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_1_2:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:4
Digital 8:538000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_1_2:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:2
Digital CNA:538000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_1_2:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:35:99:3
TVMobile:626000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_AUTO:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:160:80:1

And these are the pay channels I picked up:

Bloomberg TV:554000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_1_2:FEC_1_2:QPSK:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:39
CNBC:554000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_1_2:FEC_1_2:QPSK:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:38
ESG:554000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_1_2:FEC_1_2:QPSK:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:36
ESPN:586000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_AUTO:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:1639:1637:1
ESPN:586000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_1_2:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE:1639:1637:1
Football Channel:586000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_AUTO:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:2059:2058:18
Football Channel:586000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_1_2:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE:2059:2058:18
Innoxius TV:546000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_AUTO:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:1
Innoxius TV:546000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_7_8:FEC_1_2:QPSK:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_8:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:1
Mobile ESPN:554000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_1_2:FEC_1_2:QPSK:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:40
StarHub EURO2008 Premium:586000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_AUTO:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:2052:2051:20
StarHub EURO2008 Premium:586000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_1_2:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE:2052:2051:20
STAR SPORTS:586000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_AUTO:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:2062:2061:2
STAR SPORTS:586000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_1_2:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE:2062:2061:2
SuperSports:586000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_AUTO:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:301:302:3
SuperSports:586000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_1_2:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE:301:302:3
Tone:602000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_1_2:FEC_1_2:QPSK:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:82:5
Tone:626000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_1_2:FEC_AUTO:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:82:5
Tone:626000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_AUTO:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:82:5
Trial:554000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_1_2:FEC_1_2:QPSK:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:50
TV2GO1:554000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_1_2:FEC_1_2:QPSK:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:37
TV2GO2:554000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_1_2:FEC_1_2:QPSK:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:41

Best of luck!