A Coder's Notebook:

A free online Google keyword and URL ranking or position report software was launched today, at http://www.mikeskramstad.com/reports/free-online-google-keyword-ranking-software.php. It is based on Google’s JSON/Atom Custom Search API, not on screen scraping which would violate Google’s Terms of Service (TOS). The keyword ranking software generates a report for one website’s domain name and it is limited to 512 bytes worth of keyword phrases and 10 to 20 keyword phrases, depending on the length of the phrases. The time to generate a report is about 45 seconds, and the report can be downloaded in CSV format and optionally emailed to you or someone else.

Since it is freely available to the public, it is limited to 100 searches per day per Google’s TOS. I could have written the software to use screen scraping to by-pass this limit, however, I did not want to risk having the software blocked by Google.

Google keyword ranking report software

As seen in the image above, the user interface is very simple. You enter your keywords in a comma-separated list, which you can keep in a saved Notepad file and copy and paste the keywords into the keywords field whenever you want a report. It will save you a lot of time and effort. No need to manually do the searches and read through all of the results to find your website. Below is a sample report.

Rankings Report for www.mikeskramstad.com

Download report file results-03-28-11-0503AM.csv

Most movie DVDs are encrypted. Therefore, you need more than just a DVD copier program. On Windows systems I use software called DVFfab 8 (www.dvdfab.com) to copy or rip CSS (”Content Scramble System”) encrypted movies and videos to the hard drive.  You’ll need at least 8gb of hard disc space.  You can download DVFfab 8 here.

Rip DvD using DVDfab8 software program from www.dvdfab.com.

It isn’t free but it let me use it for a few days before requiring a code key to work. I ran it inside a VMware virtual machine running Windows Ultimate 7 on a system running Linux Ubuntu Lucid 10.04.   Is there Linux software to “descramble CSS “enhanced”  DVDs? The man page for the program vobcopy (runs on Linux) states,
‘CSS  is  sold  by  the DVD industry as a “copy protection”, though it’s more of a “view protection” as it makes DVDs unviewable with unlicensed players.  Some people have hacked CSS decryption routines, and one of those  is
available  as  a  libdvdread counterpart.’ On Linux I use vobcopy and libdvdread. The library libdvdcss must also be installed. I downloaded it from http://archive.debian-maintainers.org/unofficial/packages/libdvdcss/current_i386/. The Debian package version 1.2 libdvdcss2 may be  installed using the Package Installer.

Once you have the DVD movie ripped to your hard drive, if you are using Windows, you may use Flask MPEG to convert it to the AVI Divx format, which is much smaller than the vob files on the original DVD. You can download Flask MPEG here.

Download Flask MPEG for Windows systems.

Before running Flask MPEG you must install the Divx video and MP3 sound drivers. Download the Divx driver here. You can control the size of the final file by setting the frame rate, resolution, and sound quality.

Should you want to convert DVD vob files to AVI Divx on Linux you may use various programs, however, I stick to using ffmpeg when I can.  According to ffmpeg’s documentation, “You can transcode decrypted VOBs:

ffmpeg -i snatch_1.vob -f avi -vcodec mpeg4 -b 800k -g 300 -bf 2 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 128k snatch.avi.”

If you are using Ubuntu like me then you can install ffmpeg by typing “sudo apt-get install ffmpeg” in the terminal.

Enjoy your movies!

As I was staring at the solidly lit hard disk LED indicator, I realized that the system, a Dell Latitude D620 running Linux Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, was spending to too much time accessing the slow hard disk rather than keeping the data in RAM memory. As taught in any Introduction to Computer Science 101 class, the magnetic hard disk reads and writes data at the speed range of a few megabytes (mb) per second, while electronic random access memory (RAM) does reads and writes in the hundreds of mb per second range. Therefore, I lowered the amount of data or programs stored on my hard drive by executing the following command at the system prompt:

~$sudo sysctl -w vm.swappiness=10

The default swappiness value is 60.

You check your swapiness value using:

~$cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

I put the code at the end my /etc/sysctl.conf file so that it will boot up with the lower swapiness value. If you have a computer  with low memory, like less than 1gb, then you should probably leave it at 60. If your system is freezing or crashing because of insufficient memory then you could set it to 100, however, your machine will run at a snail’s pace.

To take advantage of the new setting I flushed the swap data from the hard drive to memory by executing the flowing program at the command prompt. You could put these statements in to BASH script to automate this process.

~$sudo swapoff -a

I turned on the swap process back with:

~$sudo swapon -a

Although it is not necessary to flush un-used data and programs from volatile memory, because the system keeps track of available space anyways, you can do it by running the following program at a terminal’s system prompt:

~$sudo echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

The above command really is not required as the system keeps the most recently used data or software in RAM in case you or it needs to use it again and it will be available to use almost instantly, speeding up your tasks or the system’s tasks most efficiently. Tools like free:

~$free -t -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1498 833 664 0 50 318
-/+ buffers/cache: 464 1033
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 1498 833 664

or, top or system monitor the will show a high “used” amount of RAM, that includes data and programs no longer in use but that might be used in the future.

top – 15:12:47 up 23:31, 2 users, load average: 0.94, 0.81, 0.77
Tasks: 182 total, 1 running, 181 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 8.7%us, 8.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 80.4%id, 0.0%wa, 2.2%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1534556k total, 866732k used, 667824k free, 51820k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 338300k cached

List of my favorite newspapers in Mexico, with links to their URLs/web addresses. They are my favorite because they have the most violence and mayhem to report. These Mexican periodicals are written only in Spanish.

El Diario, Juarez Chihuahua
www.diario.com.mx Juarez, Chihuahua

El Mexicano, Tijuana, North Baja California
www.el-mexicano.com.mx Tijuana, North Baja California

Noroeste, Sinaloa
www.noroeste.com.mx Sinaloa

Policia Federal Mexicano Secuestraron La Esposa de Mi Amigo

Rosarito Beach, Baja California, Mexico – A little while back when I called a friend he sounded upset. Later, he told me that a couple federales kidnapped his wife, and that he had to pay them $5,000 U.S.D. to release her. The ordeal lasted about two hours. Therefore, in addition to the $2,000/month he has to pay the Arrellano Felix gang, he also has to pay the Mexican federal police to live in peace. That’s business in Mexico, and in the United States.

I don’t want to be accused of just ragging on the Mexican police. Therefore, to be fair, I’ll mention how corruption works on both sides of the border. The FBI and DEA routinely arrest/kidnap the innocent spouses and girlfriends of wanted suspects to encourage them to surrender. The only difference between the Mexican police and the U.S. federal police is that the U.S. federal police don’t ask for a ransom. Instead, they ask their superiors for an upgrade in rank that translates into a raise in their paychecks.