Recent content on Arthur Pizza
Kdenlive has my go-to video editor since 2011. It used to feel a bit lacking, but now it has damn near all the features I use for video production. Once in a while I might have to spin up Blender or Audacity, but for the most part I live in the NLE. AV1 Workflow By default, Kdenlive is ready to make a standard mp4 file (h264 video + AAC audio). Not only is that format patent encumbered but also…
Why The Hell Would You do This? I’m more than happy building vector designs in Inkscape. It’s the most proficient vector designer app that is free, open source, and runs natively under Linux. However, simply having a quality SVG is only part of the process when it comes to using a plotter like the Cricut. On my own, I would not recommend the Cricut brand, but this is a machine that was…
I think there’s something awesome about an image that can be animated. It’s different than a video clip because of the quick, loopy, and automatic nature of the format. GIFs have are a bit long in the tooth these days, and are not quite as optimized as should be for the modern web. The good news is, AVIF has an animation mode and it’s a much better solution than GIF.
Many people overlook the practical value of command-line tools, and demonstrating their usefulness, whether through scripting or combining them, can serve as a compelling real-world example of their power. This little script is probably completly silly, and I’m sure there’s a million better ways to do what I want to do. I write most of my documents in Markdown. It’s simple, flexible,…
I’ve noticed that lately, I’ve been starting, stopping, and abandoning projects. This is a familiar place I’ve been in before—but it’s easy to forget how to break free from this cycle. For anyone who follows my video chanels (PeerTube and YouTube) might have noticed and drop in quality and frequency. This site hasen’t had a new post since JUNE! I have a dozen half recorded songs, comics, and…
When bringing my footage shot on my Google Pixel 9 XL Pro into Kdenlive, I noticed the clips looked a lot worse than when I previewed the clips with mpv. After looking at how ffmpeg and mpv handled the footage differently, I decided to build a LUT to fix clips I load into Kdenlive. You can simply drop the LUT onto the clip in Kdenlive, but for best results, you might want to tweak the colors with…
Running an Android without the Play Services, like I used to when I ran Lineage OS, would save battery. Google Play has so many services running in the back ground that it could actively eat at your battery at a rate that was noticeable. However, installing Play would: Handle Push Notifications Location Services Play libraries, some apps needed those And keep your apps up to date This was of…
As someone who has spent years building content around online platforms like YouTube, I’ve come to realize that relying on these giants can be a recipe for disaster. With their ever-changing algorithms and strict community guidelines, it’s easy to see how a single misstep can result in the loss of an entire channel or account. In my quest to break free from this vulnerability,…
The following policy outlines the terms and conditions for using content from various sources, including social media platforms (such as YouTube, Pixelfed, Mastodon), image sharing sites, music streaming services, and text-based online communities, to generate data for artificial intelligence models, such as language models and image generation algorithms. Permitted Use The policy permits the use…
I can see why people hate it Often called the plagiarism machine, LLM’s like ChatGPT become popular because it’s ability to generate text that resembles what a person could output, content is clearly built from referencing others works. OpenAI even has admitted that they scraped the web for content. I’m not sure if there is a way out of this. But I’m hopeful. At least with…
Getting ready for the move and it seems like I’ve been packing and cleaning forever. We knew this was how it’s going to be, with two homes that require a lot of work. Ether directly or indirectly I’ve been pulled off of my creative outlets. I blame my neurodivergency on all that. I over fixate on somethings, and avoid the goals. It’s quite madening. Side note, I did finally…
Adding metadata to your images, whether for websites or social media, is an effective strategy for improving engagement and accessibility. Let’s explore the multifaceted benefits of this practice. Accessibility: Making your content accessible to a wider audience is not just inclusive; it’s a responsible digital practice. SEO Benefits: Metadata enriches your image tags, boosting your…
We’ve experienced some ups and downs recently, with the high points being equally as enjoyable while the low moments have been absolutely devastating. In a matter of weeks, we lost both my mother and my girlfriend’s grandfather, which was an emotionally gut-wrenching one-two punch. After slowly coming to terms with living in Orange County, I am now planning to move again to Riverside…
I’ve kind of let my home site sit in the dust while I focused on other things like my YouTube and PeerTube channel. I think it’s time that I give my website the priority status that it deserves. I recently updated to the Hugo Stack theme, and I’m going to be building out this website with all my goings on. The daily updates will still be posted through the Mastodon, but this is…
I’ve been crossposting on BlueSky and Mastodon for a minute and I want to share the lazy way I’ve been doing it. Getting the Software First you need two applications. BSKY - A CLI client written in Go Toot - A CLI client written in Python BSKY In Debian it was easy to get set up. For BSKY you need to fist install the Go Language. sudo apt install golang Once Go is installed you only…
Twitter has 238 million daily active users. By comparison, the fediverse only has about 10million daily active users. One of the major differences between Twitter and Mastodon lies in their business models. Twitter is a commercial platform, which means that it is driven by the need to generate revenue for its shareholders. To do this, Twitter must constantly attract new users and keep them…
If you haven’t had the chance to experience the Southern California Linux Expo, located in Pasadena, California, I highly recommend attending. I have attended SCaLE for maybe the seventh or eighth year, and this year was exceptionally good. Unfortunately, I was only able to attend on Saturday, but I made the best of my limited time there. My former nonprofit had its booth set up, and I was…
I know I’ve talked a lot about ChatGPT. It’s been less than two years since Open AI launched ChatGPT, and it’s already become one of the most popular AI services around. With a staggering 5 million users in record time, ChatGPT is making waves in the tech world and beyond. But what is ChatGPT and why is it so popular? As a personal user of ChatGPT, I can attest to its versatility…
After a few weeks of using ChatGPT a few things became clear to me. ChatGPT is a powerful AI tool that has revolutionized the way people write content. Not only can it generate paragraphs of well-written text with just a few words in the prompt, but it can also act as a virtual collaborator, offering creative ideas and helpful suggestions. While its output is often of a good quality, it can be…
Well we managed to survive another year. Congrats, my friends. This year will have more videos, music, and probably some web-dev stuff. I’m excited to build it with you all.
I often make a lot of little cheat sheets that I often use as a quick reminder of the tools I use often enough that they can find there way into my daily workflow, but sometimes I need a little refresher. It’s not uncommon that I’m tasked to work on a server that is kinda bare-bones. Running Linux locally means you can choose what terminal software works best for you but when given a…
Last night I had a Lyft ride home from my Tuesday night meetup. I meet some local nerds as we chat about machine learning, the fall of social media, and other silly topics over delicious BBQ. It’s a lot of fun but after moving to Orange County it has become a bit more work to get to and from the restaurant. I took the but to get there. 4:30: Leave work, walk a mile.
Most of my life I’ve lived in Los Angeles County. For the first time in my life I am a resident of Orange County in California. There are some cultural differences that i am struggling to understand. To be completely honest the Trump flags are a little off putting. When you see a lifted truck and the hood stands above the average person’s height it truly feels like the owner of that…
The last few weeks have been a total whirlwind in regards to hosting. For years I used Jekyll to build my site and hosted on Netlify. However Jekyll started to have dependency issues and I needed to find a better solution. I started by biting the bullet with WordPress. I know WordPress inside and out from using at my day job. There’s a service and attention cost to running a platform like…
The number one reason I switched to Pop OS is because how they handled pipewire audio sound system. When configured correctly the pipewire audio system is light years ahead of pulseaudio. The desktop that comes with Pop OS is actually not Gnome but Cosmic DE. Technically an alternative shell for The Gnome desktop but eventually a full replacement written in rust. Installing the actual gnome…
The Thinkpad x230 Tablet About a month ago I bought a Thinkpad x230 tablet from a friend hoping to use the Wacom drawing functions built into that laptops screen. The x230t was the last tablet of that model made by Lenovo and probably one of the most affordable. However the touch/Wacom screen was dead and the price to replace the screen was more than just picking up another x230t. My…
YouTube Link In my personal observation, there seem to be two main groups of people when it comes to computing preferences. However, there’s a third category that’s slowly fading away. Let’s delve into these categories. The first category consists of those who have a genuine affinity for laptops or desktop computers. These individuals are enthusiastic about regularly upgrading to…
ABCDE is “A better CD encoder”. In this video I got over a tool that I like to use a lot for ripping CDs. I don’t really go down the rabbit hole in this program but hopefully this will make the software seem more approachable.
I’ve been bitten by the bug and the last 5 weeks I’ve been getting to know the Thinkpad x230. This little laptop is an absolute beast. Specs: Intel i5-3320M (4) @ 3.3GHz 16 GBs or DDR3 RAM 250 GB SSD Extended 9 Cell Batter @ ~8 hours 1366x768 IPS Screen Back lit keyboard I’m running Debian Stable (Stretch). Everything worked out of the box except the WiFi/Bluetooth module that I…
These is a pretty bad article on Mashable on why Mastodon won’t survive. I’m telling you its a terrible article but you’re probably thinking “Arthur, all you write is terrible articles” and you’d be correct. This one is no different. However there are things about this peice originally written by @LanceUlanoff in April of this year that are just not quite…
I like wifi access points that are relatively accessible and free. I really love the fact that the Los Angeles library and the Long Beach Library both have free, uncensored wifi. This is how it should be. Any publicly funded areas should have wifi for the community. In most of the United States it’s become common for both McDonald’s and Starbucks to offer free wifi to all their patrons…
This will be my first year attending the Southern California Linux Expo. I’ll only be there Sunday and I only could afford a general admission ticket but I’m sure it’ll be very fun. Plus, it’s in Pasadena which is nice. My cohort Johnstar and myself will be running around the Pasadena Convention Center until we are overcome with hunger. At that point we might partake in…
So I guess the street view car grabbed a shot of me when I was heading out to the local liquor store for another 80oz bucket of fizzy caffeine. I saw the car go by but I’ve seen the street view car several times. This time I actually ended up online. I haven’t learned my lesion either. I still venture out to the sunlight for a tasty beverage several times a day.
It seems to be all the rage these days. A video “gif” is a silent video embedded to a site in loop mode. I guess the audio is an optional thing but most go without it. Step One: Prepare the video file Use your favorite video editor to trim your video down to just a few seconds. To be an awesome looping “gif”, try your best to make it look seamless.
I found myself in a unique situation last night. I somehow corupted my install of Ubuntu and my installer thumb drive was no where to be found. To make matters worse I don’t have an internet connection at my house. I use my phone’s tethering to access the web. So I installed DriveDroid and I was able to get my machine back online. I only have the 16GB Nexus and it’s pretty full right now so I…
About a month ago I sold my Chromebook. It was the HP 14. There was nothing wrong with it as a Chromebook but at the end of the day when it comes to a computer I really want to have Linux. Full unlimited Linux. Then there was the size. I feel that 14 inches is not nearly as portable as I thought it would be. Lugging around a 14 laptop to do modest computing felt like over kill.
I live in a bicycle friendly city. It’s one of the reasons I moved back to Long Beach. I’ve recently gave up driving and now my transportation is predominately bicycle. For distances further than I’d like to ride or days where the weather is too brutal (rare as that is) Long Beach has a really good public transportation system. There is a really good program for city funded bicycle racks. The…
I believe APG stands for Automatic Password Generator. I’m not 100% sure but I believe it’s installed in the Default of Ubuntu and Debain Linux. If not you can always just run: sudo apt-get install apg By default it will generate 6 passwords. apg KayRoowlUv8 (Kay-Roowl-Uv-EIGHT) yeibfigsOis6 (yeib-figs-Ois-SIX) wofJect6 (wof-Ject-SIX) UzCyibShycs4 (Uz-Cyib-Shycs-FOUR) Vafkarag9 (Vaf-kar-ag-NINE)…
Last year I wrote about my adoration for youtube-dl and how it was awesome for streaming youtube videos without flash or even a web browser. Since I wrote that post youtube has changed the way in how content is streamed. They have adopted DASH an adaptive steaming protocol that should make streaming more efficient on mobile data connections. An awesome side effect of this new streaming protocol is…
There was a time not long ago that I weighed almost 300lbs. I’m not ashamed. In fact I’m proud of the weight loss. I’m still a fatty (always will be, being a fatty is all in your head!) but I’ve made a lot of progress. At the time of writing this I’m down to 218lbs. I still have quite a way to go. One of the tools that made the weight loss easier was great software to help me track my progress.
One of the biggest challenges with making a video in LibAV/FFmpeg is the lack of title cards. Using the GIMP (or ImageMagick) you can make some very awesome title cards and convert them into a static video clip to be mixed in with your other clips. If you rememeber the camera shot clips at 1080p 24fps h264. We encoded the clips to 720p 24fps with Mpeg2Video. An older video format, but gives us the…
For a few weeks the Cthulhu has been out of commision. I’ve been working on an old beat up Acer Aspire 5100 lately. Even though the computer has a PassMark of 750 it feels more like a 75… I’ve had some netbooks that could just crush this machine in terms of performance. To paraphrase the old statement: the best computer is the one you have. Chrome has really helped with the over all sluggishness…
I’m still amazed with the pictures I get out of this Nexus 4. I’m using the “leaked” Android 4.3 camera and it’s almost instant. Though this picture is anything short of perfect it’s still quite eye popping. Let’s hope the new Moto-X phone, which is supposed to take the place of the Nexus 4 can still beat this. We’ll hopefully find out soon.
I hate flash. It’s taking a very long time dying but it needs to die. Sadly there are a lot of amazing websites that use it. Fortunately I found a quick trick to watching youtube videos from the terminal. This requires youtube-dl and mplayer. Both should be in most major Linux distros repositories. mplayer -fs $(youtube-dl -g -f 22 youtube.com/watch?v=3V35jvY0u7I) The key tags are the “-g” that…
WARNING! *Following this tutorial will wipe all the data off your Nexus device. If you’re files aren’t automatically synced to the cloud or backed up you will not have access to them. They will be gone. Poof! Nothing left. Though very unlikely, when you flash hardware you take a chance of permanently damaging your hardware. Certain outlets that sell Nexus devices will cover this damage. Most do…
There is a blog post from ‘If Jesus was Irish’ that attempts to tackle the Bluray / AVCHD mastering process under Linux. The two formats are near identical. The only difference really seems to be the disc type and bitrate of the video. The good news? It can be done (or so they say). The bad news, it requires closed source applications. Let’s start by pretending you’ve…
Installing ADB on any Ubuntu based system is as simple as adding the ‘android-tools-adb‘ package. You can also add the package through the command line: sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb Once installed you should make sure your cellphone ‘Android Debugging’ is switched on. Then it’s as simple as: sudo adb devices This should find and mount your phone. This opens up a lot of awesome options…
For some unknown (and possibly criminally dumb) reason one of the Linux desktops strongest features are horrifyingly stunted. I’m talking about auto-complete in Bash. Fortunately there is a quick and easy fix to un-Canonical the system. Simply uncomment the following in /etc/bash.bashrc as SuperUser or Root: I’m not entirely sure if it will look exactly the same on your system. This…
Hello! I’m Arthur, a multifaceted professional with a passion for technology and social impact. As a WordPress specialist, I enjoy bringing engaging experiences to life for my clients. When I’m not coding or designing, you can find me advocating for the power of Linux and Open Source software development. I believe in the importance of community-driven approaches to software…