University of Canterbury, New Zealand
I had a 720p movie with 60 FPS. Many web pages argued that it is not possible to play such a movie on your iPad. I converted the source movie with Handbreak‘s iPad profile and only changed the framerate to “same as source”. After the conversion I added the transcoded movie to iTunes and transferred it to the iPad (version 2). It played back at 60 FPS without any trouble with the iOS 6 native movie app. Sometimes things work.
By default Filemaker stores all the files for an externally stored container field in just one flat directory structure. If you, for example, use the directory “image/” to store all your photos, then all images will be put into it without any sub directories. The file name will be the same was it was on your local disk. If you import two files with the same file name then Filemaker will automatically add serial numbers to it to avoid overwriting matching files.
Filemaker allows you to calculate the path under which a container field is stored on an external data source. You find this setting in the options of the container field under the storage tab:
I wanted to calculate the path depending on where the file was stored on my local file system. Photos that are locally in a folder called “photos_100” should also be stored in a directory with the same name on the server. I wrote a formula that calculates the right path for the server location based on the file path field that I fill during the import of the images. I defined a field called “image_path_during_import” which is filled with the path of the images stored on my local file system:
The problem is that image file itself seems to get imported into Filemaker before the file path field does. That means that the field image_path_during_import is still empty while the image is placed on the server. Once the import is complete, the image_path_during_import field shows the correct data and also the server path can be calculated. But not during import.
I could only think about two methods of resolving the problem. One is to import the data in two stages. First, import the picture normally and then import the same files again, but this time only import the image and use the option “Updating matching records in found set”. Another solution is to slightly change the server import path calculation so that nothing fundamentally changes. Filemaker will then offer you the option to transfer the files to a new location and since the correct path can now be calculated, Filemaker moves the images to the right place on the server. I hope that Filemaker fixes this problem in their next update.
Today I wanted to upload another manuscript to Elsevier’s Editorial System (EES). My manuscript had many images so the total number of files to be uploaded was 35. For some time now Elsevier offers an “Enhanced Upload Tool” and I thought it was time for me to start using it. It is based on a java applet and I am running Mac OS 1.7.5 “Lion”.
The applet did not start at all and it claimed that a plugin would be required. The problem is that Apple is no longer directly supporting Java. Elsevier still claims that Java works out of the box on Mac OS X, but that is no longer the case. You need to download and install the latest version directly from Oracle. After restarting Firefox the applet loaded, but did cause an error:
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I am playing Simpsons Tapped out and based on the data at the Simpsons Wiki, I confirmed a suspicion I had for some time. The houses in Springfield are setup so that the houses that give you income at a higher frequency also give you the highest hourly income rate (see figure 1). This means that the more often you have to tap on a house, the higher your hourly income. You are being rewarded for wasting your time in this game.
Continue reading “Quickly earning money in Simpsons Tapped Out with houses”
For one of my research projects I needed the flags of all countries. These national flags are often available as icons or bitmap graphics, but it was difficult to find them in a vector format, such as SVG. Here are some sources for bitmap flags:
Wikimedia has a full overview of all the flags with links to the flags in various formats. But I needed them all together on my computer for processing, so I harvested them all an put them into one zip file. All the flags are under Creative Commons License, so feel free to use them. You can download the All National Flags In Vector Format (SVG).