The Seekers Hut

Some ways to dig up the past

2009-07-13T01:04:00.006Z

There is an old lore among the seekers:

Once on the net, Always on the net

Nothing is ever lost once it is put on the internet. However the problem is to dig it out from the depths. One simple, effective and often overlooked solution is the cache option a lot of search engines offer. They take snapshots of each page it examines and caches (stores) that version as a back-up. That option comes up with results of every search query. If the link is not alive simply click the cached link. Or you can simply type (for example)

http://google.com/search?q=cache:your required page

and there you have it.

To go to pages even older than google's cache visit the Internet Archive. They are building and maintaining a free and openly accessible online digital library and an archive of the web. Just go to their Wayback Machine and put in your website and see its various avatars over the years.

The Internet Archive also has an extensive library of texts audio and video and software. Go there search your favourite musician or band and be prepared to be surprised. These are non copyrighted either in the public domain or licensed under a license that allows redistribution, like Creative Commons.

If you are looking for long forgotten singers you might just find some mp3 there. You might be interested in some popular band whose works are definitely copyrighted. You may stumble upon some live concert recording.

They also have movies fallen out of copyright including some classics like Battleship Potemkin, Nosferatu and some Charlie Chaplin movies among others.

The texts collection includes digitized books from various libraries around the world as well as many special collections.

Go and see for yourself and explore.
Tell us what we do not know about digging the web.

Search Engines -1 (The One and Only Google)

2009-07-10T09:26:00.004Z

To search is not to just look. It means "to look thoroughly to find something; to examine; to explore". This is a theme we will explore again and again in this hut. But to begin with the basics there is one search engine we all know of: Google.

By now we know of its immense powers but there are some other powerful search tools which we ignore only at our peril. We will explore some of them in due course.

However the world wide web is a deep and dark place. It does not give up its secrets easily. To find the pearls you have to dive deep.

We know that adding some words like "index.of", "parent directory" in our search can magically increase its potency. There are some kind souls who have harnessed some its powers and have put it in an easy to use format for us mortals. Maybe you can check this out.

Leave your favourite google tips with us to share with others. And let us know some other search engines you want to know more about.

The Power of Mplayer

2009-07-09T15:59:00.003Z

Mplayer is a free and open source media player. Its companion package Mencoder is a powerful tool to covert various media formats into each other. A glimpse into the its powers.

Joining avi files :

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -idx -o output.avi video1.avi video2.avi video3.avi

Cutting avi files

mencoder -ss 00:00:02 -endpos 01:10:50 -ovc copy -oac copy bigvideo.avi -o output.avi

In this example
starting position 2 seconds
ending position is 1 hour 10 minutes 50 seconds
of the file bigvideo.avi

Ripping dvds

mencoder dvd:// -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate="1200"
-slang en -oac mp3lame -lameopts br=128 -o output.avi

changing the vbitrate to change the size of your output file
change the slang options to get subtitles in the language of your choice or remove it to rip without subtitles

Converting wmv to mp3

mencoder infile.wmv -ofps 23.976 -ovc lavc -oac copy -o outfile.avi

Share with us more such command lines

Setting up this Hut

2009-07-09T13:04:00.000Z

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

The seeker will try to show you the path to knowing and using the world wide web and some tools to use it better. The knowledge will not be complete because:
the seeker does not know everything
the seeker wishes that you find out the rest

He will try to show the way to know but what you do with the knowledge is upto you.