Messing with ffmpeg

Today evening I wanted to quicly upscale one SD video to HD with ffmpeg, which was my encoder of choice for quite a long time.

But it ain’t easy. First, default Ubuntu 12.04 ffmpeg didn’t support h264. Switching to VP8 didn’t help as output quality was awful and several how-tos had unsupported options. It all looked like ffmpeg was outdated. And it was. Ubuntu ships Libav, a fork of ffmpeg, v 0.8 w/o x264 support.

Luckly, there’s a ppa with latest version (0.10) of original ffmpeg on launchpad. Using

ffmpeg -i in.mov -acodec copy -vcodec libx264 -crf_max 7000 -q 50 -s 960×720 HD.mov

I could convert my 4:3 ratio SD file into 720p one. I wish I used Avidemux and hopefully it would just simply work.

Weekend reading

A bunch of good articles worth reading. Topic covered – testers in agile team, patent monopoly, buccaneer learning, good and bad manager patterns and improcing your restrospectives (and other repeated things)

scrum – agile = problems

Scrum seems to be the most popular agile framework – when you hear agile, you most probably will hear sprint, retrospective etc. Scrum is a framework.. Agile is a set of values. Scrum didn’t mention any values explicitly, but has them implicitly – some of it’s foundations can’t be used without those values.

re: Remarkable employees

Recently LinkedIn linked (what a coinsidence ) to article by Inc.com called 8 Qualities of Remarkable Employees. The list was like this:

1. They ignore job descriptions.
2. They’re eccentric.
3. But they know when to dial it back.
4. They publicly praise.
5. And they privately complain.
6. They speak when others won’t.
7. They like to prove others wrong.
8. They’re always fiddling.

What the article doesn’t say is that many organisation are not ready for these kind people. Ignoring job descriptions and private complaining leads to conflicts. Speaking out could result in disappointment in “always satisfied” / “we can’t influence that” colleagues.

Proving others wrong and fiddling around can also lead to unwanted escalations and conflicts. One’s points can be ignored, or one can get a ‘lucky’ chance to solve a big problem on his own without much support. Ones effort left unsupported leads to dissapointment too.

All this creates radical difference in situational awareness and toxic working environment. Don’t you find that too? Should you be remarkable and not giving up – keeping searching and not settling? Or should one ‘grow up’ and mind his own bussiness?

I looove to work at home, especially at night

(вариант на русском ниже)

At night nothing and no one distracts. No neighbours, no cars, no kids outside, no mails, no chats – my mind is crystal clear.

Psychedelic trance, it’s fast tic tic tic rhythm and cosmic themes set my mind on super speed. I can focus and put my thoughts down very very fast. Blinking lights in the dark seeing in the window, pure silence around allows me to de-focus, dream around and generate wonderful ideas not only about work, but about life in general.

It’s all different in day time – cars, kids, music, mails, chats. Especially in the open office – people arguing, laughing, walking and talking. And no place to walk in circles thinking about stuff. You sit like a plant in front of your monitor.

In these 3 hours I accomplished more then in last two days. Don’t get me wrong – I did lots of activities, but I couldn’t do proper thinking and creativity in the office. It seems best office day is – attend the meetings and go focus at home.

 

Я ОБОЖАЮ работать дома, особенно ночью

Ночью никто и ничего не отвлекает, ни соседи, ни машины, ни дети на улице, нет почты и молчат все чаты – голова полна внимания.

Пси-транс, этот быстрый тыц тыц тыц ритм и космические темы разгоняют мозг до сверхзвуковой. Я сфокусирован и могу быстро-быстро собрать свои мысли в кучу и записать их. Огоньки в темноте из окна и полная тишина позволяют расфокусироваться, подумать о чём-то другом, помечтать и сгенерировать прекрасные идеи не только о работе, но и о жизни.

Днём совсем не то – машины, дети, музыка, мыло, чаты. А в открытом офисе вообще беда – постоянно болтают люди, смех, крик. Нет места, где можно походить кругами в тишине и обдумать мыслю. Сидишь как овощь перед монитором.

Сегодня за три часа я сделал больше, чем за два предыдущих рабочих дня. Да, в офисе я много бегал, митинговал и общался, но там никак не сесть и не подумать о проблеме по существу. Пожалуй идеальный рабочий день – отсидеть собрания и свалить фокусироваться домой

Understand your manoeuvre

Below is my free translation of Alexei Kapterev’s (website and blog) blog post about understanding ones goals and purpose.

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‘Understand your manoeuvre’ by Alexei Kapterev
Suvorov once said – “Every soldier should understand his manoeuvre”. He didn’t address soldiers, but officers, who were ought to explain the manoeuvre to soldiers. In real life, very few soldiers really wanted to understand own manoeuvre. They didn’t care about it’s goal, they cared… not to die. Understanding the goal didn’t help in this. On the contrary, understanding it led to realisation of own inevitable death. This demotivated, sometimes very much.

Can software metrics measure it?

Bumped into an InfoWorld article by Neil McAllister on software development metrics. Good questions raised:

Code metrics are fine if all you care about is raw code production.

Do your metrics take into account time spent refactoring or documenting existing code?

Are developers who take time to train and mentor other teams about the latest code changes considered less productive than ones who stay heads-down at their desks and never reach out to their peers?

And can metrics account for productivity sinks related to unforeseen circumstances? What about code that grows longer and ever more convoluted due to scope creep — how is productivity measured then?

What about code that is functional, high-quality, and delivered on time, but doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do because of simple miscommunication?

How well do the metrics account for delays due to budget shortfalls, bugs in tools or platforms, unmet dependencies from other groups, or dysfunctional processes?

Be sure to check the article and linked content in it