New User Experience

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Finally nazham.com released with a new theme. I kinda hate the old theme, just that I have no time to make any changes. The name of this new theme can be found at the footer of this site. Below are some of the changes:

  • The site are more focused on content.
  • It only display excerpts on the main page and rss feeds, instead of the whole content.
  • Clean minimalist look.

Tell me what you think.

Things To Do Immediately After Getting Your TMNet UNIFI (HSBB)

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Little Introduction:

On March 2010, Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) launched its High Speed Broadband (HSBB) service, called ‘UniFi‘. TM’s UniFi high speed broadband packages comprises services of high speed Internet, video (IPTV), and phone, with speeds of 5 Mbps, 10Mbps and 20Mbps.

Upon sign up, the customer will receive 4 pieces of equipment:

  • Fiber Broadband Termination Unit (BTU), ie. where you connect the fiber optic cable into.
  • WiFi router (D-Link, D-615 with custom firmware), which is plugged into the fiber BTU.
  • Set-Top box for IPTV and VoD, which will plug into the WiFi router.
  • DECT phone plugged into the Fiber BTU.

I’m not going to rant about the UniFi or TMNet’s services, nor speed, nor the much debated bandwith cap that TM said they’re going to impose.

I’m going to talk about the security (or the lack thereof) of the default WiFi router setup.

Continue reading →

Playing 1080p Video in Ubuntu Without Lag

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I have not-so-bad specs for my laptop:
– Dell XPS M1530
– Intel Code 2 Duo CPU 2.40GHz
– 4GB RAM
– Running Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10

I have no problem running 720p .mkv HD video files. No lagging, no dropped frames whatsover. However, when running 1080p .mkv files, especially those big sizes full-HD Blue Ray medias, I have:
– Lagging,
– Dropped frames,
– 100% CPU utilizations.

It doesn’t matter if I’m using VLC, or Totem Movie Player, it will always have those problem above. From what I’ve read, this is probably due to FFMpeg codecs for H.264 decoding.

However, I have a solution, found from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1037625

Below are the steps:
1. Install mplayer:
sudo apt-get install mplayer-nogui

2. Run your 1080p .mkv files with it:
mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau /path/to/the/mkv/file

Now the HD movies playing in my Ubuntu laptop are smooth as it can be.
Try it out. Cheers.

You, unplugged

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Strip away your health, your wealth, your family, your friends, your network, your high IQ (if applicable), your knowledge, your qualifications, your job title – what’s left?

All the unread mails in your inbox, of course.