Category: wissen

Briefwechsel Michael Ende und Werner Zurfluh

Da ich grade nochmal panisch danach gesucht habe, hier der Link zu einem Briefwechsel zwischen Michael Ende und dem Klartraum-Forscher Werner Zurfluh (1945 – 2008):

https://oobe.ch/endebr.htm

Ist auch auf archive.org archiviert, insofern bleibt uns das wohl erhalten.

Ich weiß noch, dass ich das damals super faszinierend und traurig fand, dass Ende so unfassbar fantastische Geschichten schrieb, also Zugang zu solchen Welten hatte in den Briefen aber auf mich irgendwie verzweifelt wirkte in seinem Wunsch sowas auch erträumen zu können.

How to batch-convert videos with ffmpeg including all audio and subtitles

Since I spend quite a bit of time tinkering with this I though it might be interesting to others.

The following can be executed on a folder with a bunch of videos which ffmpeg will convert including all audio and subtitle streams and put in a subfolder (not very) originally called „Done“ (not sure if you need to create that folder or if ffmpeg will do that*):

for i in *.*; do ffmpeg -hwaccel_output_format cuda -i "$i" -map 0:v:0 -map 0:a? -map 0:s? -c:v hevc_nvenc -b:v 2000k -preset slow -c:a aac -b:a 128k -c:s copy "Done/${i%.*}.mkv"; done

All the for i in for the batch-conversion is way above my tiny „I can’t learn programming“ brain and is taken from this StackExchange thread (among other things I can’t find now). You could do *.mp4 or *.mkv if you only want those types of videos to be converted.

-hwaccel_output_format cuda and -c:v hevc_nvenc? tells ffmpeg to use the GPU with Cuda (so will probably only work with NVIDIA) and use HEVC (x265) as the video-codec.

The interesting bits are -map 0:v:0 -map 0:a? -map 0:s? which selects all video(?), audio streams and subtitles. I was using -map 0 before but this sometimes created empty video or audio streams which caused all video players I tried to crash (except for good old VLC who did not care). Not ideal.

-c:v and -c:a select the audio and video codecs (c = codec) with slow preset in this case, whereas

-b:v and -b:a tells ffmpeg the bitrate (b = bitrate).

-c:s copy copies the subtitles.

* Edit: You do need to have a folder withe name you specify there in the folder where you run the script. If someone knows how to automate that I’d be happy to hear how ^__^

How to import PDFs as „images“ in Scribus

Since I had to figure this out multiple times now (because I always forget how to do it +___+), here’s a workflow that seems to be working for me to add white frames of different widths to different sized pages to vector illustrations – my local printer The Art of Print (which is amazing ^__^) here in Edinburgh wants it that way.

I need page sizes ranging from A5 to A2, including borders between 5 mm and 2 cm.

Screenshot of Scribus showing the same illustration on different sized pages.

Yesterday I figured out that it should be possible to do this in Inkscape with clones but there seems to be a bug that just exports nothing instead of clones on a new page (and cloning a whole illustration is no fun because you need to put it all in one top layer with sublayers).

After a lot of fiddling I remembered that in Scribus you can actually import PDFs (but not SVGs, apparently) as images into image frames (ctrl-i or rightclick > Content > Get Image) if you change the „Files of Type“(?) to „All supported formats“.

This imports the vector graphic as an image (not what we want at all!) but unlike File > Import > Get Vector file which imports (or rather appends, inserts) the PDF or SVG as editable objects this cuts the image at the original page border (yay).

You can then arrange the PDF / image just as you need on pages and when exporting it to a PDF for printing you can check the box on the PDF export dialogue in General > File Options > Embed PDF & EPS files (EXPERIMENTAL!) to export the PDF „image“ as vectors. This has always worked well for me so far.

Scribus PDF-export dialogue with the Embed PDF-Files option highlighted

Thanks to Raghavendra Kamath for pointing out this last trick out to me, otherwise this whole process would be useless ^__^

Now I just need to remember how to do this when I need it again in a few months …

„Fixing“(?) Duplicati MissingRemoteHash error

I recently got a few errors like this:

2023-11-30 23:46:34 +00 - [Warning-Duplicati.Library.Main.Operation.FilelistProcessor-MissingRemoteHash]: remote file duplicati-[stringofnumbersandletters].dblock.zip is listed as Verified with size 0 but should be 52383505, please verify the sha256 hash "[anotherstringofnumbersandletters]"

rebuild-missing-dblock-files and no-local-blocks (saw that on the Duplicati forum) didn’t work, so I copied the files Duplicati was complaining about somewhere else and deleted the originals.

I then deleted and recreated the database via the Web-GUI (got errors that said files where missing and registered as such 😱), ran backup again, no warnings or errors, anymore. Profit?

There’s a lingering doubt that the files are just gone and not recreated but at least there are no more errors +__+

How to fix hyphenation not working for Scribus on Fedora Linux

I just found out how to fix #hyphenation not working in #Scribus on #Fedora (probably for #languages that aren’t system language):

Check that the text frame (Windows > Content Properties), character and paragraph styles (Edit > Styles, maybe you need to double click on a style to edit) are all the correct language (in my case German on an English system).

If Extras > Hyphenate Text still isn’t working, go to Windows > Resources > Hyphenation Dictionaries and check that you have the correct .dics installed (for me it was only English) and download the appropriate ones if necessary. You can also see the path where they are installed on the system here, so you could manually move a .dic there if you manage to find one.

Tadaa 🎉

EDIT: Writing this down has already helped my once, amazing! You might need to restart Scribus after all these steps before it starts working, at least that’s how it was for me just now.

Gemischtwarenladen

Race in Japan.

Agents of the Realm ist ein supercooler Magical Girl Webcomic, wunderbar divers und queer. Extrapunkte dafür, das eine der Hauptpersonen im Comic sichtbare Armbehaarung hat ♥ ‿ ♥

Kurze Übersicht zu Geschlecht in verschiedenen menschlichen Kulturen.  (Via diesem wieder sehr lesenswerten Artikel)

Gewächhäuser unter Wasser.

Auch fiktive Charaktere aus dem Hello Kitty-Umfeld sind nicht for Twitter-Hasstiraden sicher. It’s a sick, sad world, wie Kotzendes Einhorn sagt.

Ha, das muss aber auch doof sein, sein Geld in einer Technologie zu haben, deren Zeit vorbei ist.

Viele Disney-Bösewichter haben queere Eigenschaften/Aussehen und prägen dadurch schon bei Kindern Vorurteile gegen nicht genderkonforme Menschen.

I don’t know how I got the notion that Bend it Like Beckham should be a queer movie (maybe I confuse it with Nina’s Heavenly Delights? That would be embarrassing), but every time I rewatch it I’m furious that it indeed does not end like this.