wxPython ships by default with the wx.MediaCtrl for very basic playback of music or videos. As I would like to do more advanced video manipulation, I was curious if I could use Gstreamer directly in wxPython to create my own pipelines. It was surprisingly easy.For those who don't know Gstreamer, I quote the website (http://www.gstreamer.org): GStreamer is a library that allows the construction of graphs of media-handling components, ranging from simple playback to complex audio (mixing) and video (non-linear editing) processing. Applications can take advantage of advances in codec and filter technology transparently.There are python bindings for it, of which the documentation can be found on http://pygstdocs.berlios.deI would also suggest to read these introductions to gstreamer & python:

• Introducing Gstreamer
• Getting started with GStreamer with Python
• Using Gnonlin with GStreamer and Python

I translated the video player example 2.2 of the tutorial from pyGtk to wxPython:http://pygstdocs.berlios.de/pygst-tutorial/playbin.htmlIt should be straightforward to use this as a base for implementing your own pipelines. I work on Ubuntu, where I could install everything straight from the standard repositories.Here is the source code:#!/usr/bin/env python#Example 2.2 http://pygstdocs.berlios.de/pygst-tutorial/playbin.htmlimport sys, osimport wximport pygstpygst.require("0.10")import gstimport gobjectgobject.threads_init()class WX_Main(wx.App): def OnInit(self): window = wx.Frame(None) window.SetTitle("Video-Player") window.SetSize((500, 400)) window.Bind(wx.EVT_CLOSE,self.destroy) vbox = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL) hbox = wx.BoxSizer(wx.HORIZONTAL) self.entry = wx.TextCtrl(window) hbox.Add(self.entry, 1, wx.ALL|wx.ALIGN_CENTER_VERTICAL, 4) self.button = wx.Button(window,label="Start") hbox.Add(self.button, 0, wx.ALL|wx.ALIGN_CENTER_VERTICAL, 4) self.button.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.start_stop) vbox.Add(hbox, 0, wx.EXPAND, 0) self.movie_window = wx.Panel(window) vbox.Add(self.movie_window,1,wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND,4) window.SetSizer(vbox) window.Layout() window.Show() self.SetTopWindow(window) self.player = gst.element_factory_make("playbin", "player") bus = self.player.get_bus() bus.add_signal_watch() bus.enable_sync_message_emission() bus.connect('message', self.on_message) bus.connect('sync-message::element', self.on_sync_message) return True def start_stop(self, event): if self.button.GetLabel() == "Start": filepath = self.entry.GetValue() if os.path.exists(filepath): self.button.SetLabel("Stop") self.player.set_property('uri',"file://" + filepath) self.player.set_state(gst.STATE_PLAYING) else: self.player.set_state(gst.STATE_NULL) self.button.SetLabel("Start") def on_message(self, bus, message): t = message.type if t == gst.MESSAGE_EOS: self.player.set_state(gst.STATE_NULL) self.button.SetLabel("Start") elif t == gst.MESSAGE_ERROR: self.player.set_state(gst.STATE_NULL) self.button.SetLabel("Start") def on_sync_message(self, bus, message): if message.structure is None: return message_name = message.structure.get_name() if message_name == 'prepare-xwindow-id': imagesink = message.src imagesink.set_property('force-aspect-ratio', True) imagesink.set_xwindow_id(self.movie_window.GetHandle()) def destroy(self,event): #Stop the player pipeline to prevent a X Window System error self.player.set_state(gst.STATE_NULL) event.Skip() app = WX_Main()app.MainLoop()

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For a dutch text click here.IntroductionThe Dutch Ministry of Finance organized an architecture competition for which a selected group of architectural offices (unstudio, nox, ...) and artists were invited, including myself. The goal of the competition was not to design a building, but the new 5 euro commemorative coin with the theme 'Netherlands and Architecture'. The winner will be rewarded with a nice price, but most of all with the honor: his design will be realized and will be a legal coin within the Netherlands.I approached the subject 'Netherlands and Architecture' from two points of view. On one hand I paid tribute to the rich Dutch architecture history and on the other hand to the contemporary quality of Dutch architecture. These form also the two sides of my coin. Traditionally the front of the coin needs to portray the queen, while the back side displays the value of the coin.Front sideWhen someone looks closely (click above on picture to enlarge) to my portrait of the queen, it becomes clear that her portrait is constructed with names of important Dutch architects. On the outside the names are clearly readable, while they slowly get smaller to the center. Under a magnifying glass all names are readable, but not with only the human eye. It is fascinating to see how an old medium like a coin can be in this way a 'compact disc' of information.The tension between what is readable and what not, is also a metaphor how time shapes history. Some big names of the past, might be smaller names in the future and vice versa. To reflect this idea, I chose to order the architects not alphabetically or chronologically but in a new way: I used the internet as a seismograph and ordered the architects by the number of hits on the internet. Of course this order changes over time and as such this is another time stamp on the coin besides the number '2008'. Only the first 109 architects fitted on the coin, so that was immediately the selection. Apparently becoming famous goes exponentially:In order to achieve the image I developed my own single-line font system. I let the line width change within the same character in order to evoke an underlying picture:Back sideNowadays Dutch architecture is famous for its strong conceptual approach. This translates itself in the fact that there are not only a lot of books about Dutch architects, but also by Dutch architects. On the back side of the coin I treated the edge of the coin as a book shelve. The books rise as buildings towards the center. Through their careful placement they combine to outline the Netherlands, while birds’ silhouettes suggest the capitals of all the provinces. The following scheme reveals the process:One of the issues was how many books to take: many thin books or fewer thick books. With one very thick book you would only get a circle. To get the best approximation of the Netherlands you would need books of only one page, which is not optimal either. Therefore I needed to find the optimum between these two extremes which you can see in the scheme below. On the left you see the approximation of the Netherlands, in the middle you see the 'skyline' of the books and on the right you see the difference between the 'skyline' of the books and of the border line of the Netherlands:The following is the idea sketch for the birds. Each bird flies above the capital of each Dutch province. In the final coin these random birds are replaced with a bird which is typical for that province.TechnologyThe whole design was done for 100% with free software. The biggest part consists of custom software in Python, of course within the SPE editor. For the visual power I used PIL and pyCairo. From time to time also Gimp, Inkscape and Phatch helped quite a bit. All the developing and processing was done on GNU/Linux machines which were running Ubuntu/Debian. In the end I had to collaborate closely on location together with the technicians of the Royal Dutch Mint (coin factory). So all the last bits were done on my Asus Eee PC. (I am still wondering why Asus doesn't offer Ubuntu on its netbooks.) The Eee laptop took a bit longer (30 seconds instead of 3 seconds to generate a whole coin), but did the job just fine. For looking up the number of hits on the internet, I rediscovered Yahoo, which provides a much better api for automatic querying than its competitors. Of course the jury judged only the design and not the software used as others used Maya, Illustrator, ...And the winner is...I am proud to announce that I won the competition! So soon 350.000 Dutch people will use the fruits of free software. I would have loved to release the coin under the GPL, which could maybe solve the financial crisis. However for obvious reasons I was not allowed to do that. There will be also special editions for collectors which can be bought world wide: a massive silver edition for € 30,95 and a massive gold edition for € 194,95. They will be probably sold out quickly as these are real collectors items. The coin is released in all Dutch post offices to the public the same day as the Intrepid Ibex: 30th October 2008.Here are some scans of the real coin:The coin will be advertised 20 times on prime time on Dutch television with a nice video clip (will be available soon) and advertisements will run in several newspapers. Today was the official launch of the coin, with from left to right: myself, Secretary of State for Finance De Jager, the Chief government Architect Liesbeth van der Pol and Master of the Mint Maarten Brouwer...

Quest for Glory 2 VGA remake running under wine.

If you want to have the latest version of SPE, use subversion which is very easy. (Subversion is a way for multiple people around the world to work on the same program. It keeps the changes that they make to the source code of that program in sync with each other.) Do not forget first to uninstall your previous version of SPE! Windows users can uninstall SPE through 'Add/Remove programs' in the Control Panel (look for 'python-spe*', not for 'spe') and use a subversion client (tortoisesvn, rapidsvn) to get the latest SPE. Linux and mac users need just to copy and paste this in the terminal:svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/python/spe/trunk/_speThis will create a '_spe' folder. (Do not rename it to 'spe' or another name!) From this folder you can run:python SPE.pyTo browse the subversion repository online, surf to:http://svn.berlios.de/wsvn/python/spe/trunk/_spe/For ubuntu: to first remove SPE, type this in the terminal:sudo apt-get remove spe kiki wxgladeTo install subversion (svn), type this in the terminal:sudo apt-get install subversionInstructions for Tortoise SVN (thanks Richard):1. Go to the location you want to download SPE to2. Right click -> SVN Checkout3. Paste svn://svn.berlios.de/python/spe/trunk/_spe into the url field4. Click ok and it should work.

Search all things ubuntu in a custom search site dedicated to all the ubuntu derivated distros.

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Met kantoren in meerdere landen, een doorgedreven logistieke automatisering en een sterk geïntegreerde back-office met een duidelijke online aanwezigheid, worden veel eisen gesteld aan de informatica infrastructuur.
Aangezien Velleman een mixed environment heeft van zowel klassieke propiëtaire software, alsook extensief gebruik maakt van open source software, werd er gezocht naar externe hulp met uitgebreide expertise in beide gebieden.
In Ginsys vonden wij een partner die ons objectief advies verstrekt en ook helpt nieuwe systeem projecten mee te implementeren en te ondersteunen. Aldus de CIO.

If you need to give presentations with your laptop and you are running Ubuntu Hardy, you might find that the gnome-display-properties (System>Preferences>Screen Resolution) do not work out of the box. So it is impossible to connect a beamer unless you clone. The same is true for a dual screen setup with Compiz.There is however a very easy trick to solve this. I have tested it with an Asus Eee PC 701 4G and with my Ati Radeon X600 desktop system. I am now enjoying running dual screen with all the 3d desktops enabled.The problem is that the default screen size configuration is too small, which does not allow you to place too screens next to each other. On the other hand Compiz can not handle texture sizes bigger than 2048x2048, which means for example two monitors of 1024x768. If you want to use bigger resolution, it is still possible, but you will need to turn off compiz and will loose the 3d effects.So to solve it, fire up a terminal:$ sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup$ sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.confThen find the "Screen" section and change it like this:Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Monitor "Configured Monitor" Device "Configured Video Device" SubSection "Display" Virtual 2048 2048 EndSubSectionEndSectionTo undo, you can just type:$ sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup /etc/X11/xorg.confAfter doing this, you will be able to use gnome-display-properties with ease and run dual screen setups like this:

If you need to give presentations with your laptop and you are running Ubuntu Hardy, you might find that the gnome-display-properties (System>Preferences>Screen Resolution) do not work out of the box. So it is impossible to connect a beamer unless you clone. The same is true for a dual screen setup with Compiz.There is however a very easy trick to solve this. I have tested it with an Asus Eee PC 701 4G and with my Ati Radeon X600 desktop system. I am now enjoying running dual screen with all the 3d desktops enabled.The problem is that the default screen size configuration is too small, which does not allow you to place too screens next to each other. On the other hand Compiz can not handle texture sizes bigger than 2048x2048, which means for example two monitors of 1024x768. If you want to use bigger resolution, it is still possible, but you will need to turn off compiz and will loose the 3d effects.So to solve it, fire up a terminal:$ sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup$ sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.confThen find the "Screen" section and change it like this:Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Monitor "Configured Monitor" Device "Configured Video Device" SubSection "Display" Virtual 2048 2048 EndSubSectionEndSectionTo undo, you can just type:$ sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup /etc/X11/xorg.confAfter doing this, you will be able to use gnome-display-properties with ease and run dual screen setups like this: