Grub Dual-boot Installation - Windows 7/Linux Mint 22.1

I have been putting this off for way too long. But last month, I finally gathered enough courage to take the plunge: I installed Linux Mint 21.2 on my trusty (and slightly ancient) refurbished Lenovo M70e desktop.

Rebooting after the installation felt like waiting for the results of a high-stakes exam. Would it work? Would my computer explode into a cloud of smoke? Thankfully, none of the above happened. Everything went smoothly - no hiccups, no drama. I stuck to the default settings suggested by the installer for a dual-boot setup, and Linux Mint played nice with my existing Windows 7 installation.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. With Linux Mint 22.1 released earlier this year, I thought, "Why not? Let's upgrade!" Spoiler alert: things didn't go as smoothly as they did with version 21.2.

Resynthesizer's Heal Selection In Gimp Under Linux Mint 21.2

Installing the plug-in Resynthesizer in Gimp 2.10.30 running in Linux Mint 21.2 is not as straight forward as it seems. The root of the problem, it seems, is that Resynthesizer requires Python 2. However, Python 2 has been dropped on Linux Mint 21.2 in favour of Python 3. But luckily there is a work-around thanks to some very clever people on the Internet.

Anyway, this is how I got Resynthesizer (and thus Heal Selection) working on Linux Mint 21.2 for Gimp 2.10.30, as of 21st February 2024.

1. Install Gimp via Linux Mint's "Software Manager".

2. Download and install Resynthesizer executable into the local gimp plug-in directory (usually ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/plug-ins)
   
   (description can be found in this forum thread https://www.gimp-forum.net/Thread-Gimp-2-10-Resynthesizer-Linux?pid=11261#pid11261)
   
   The rest of the Resynthesizer Python scripts can be found in the folder PluginScripts at github.
   
   Make sure all downloads are executable (via the command line, I use the "chmod 664").
   
   I could have compiled the Resynthesizer executable myself, but I didn't.
   

3. Download and install 'gimp-python2-overlay-launcher-ubuntu22.04.AppImage' (a 27.2 MB download)
   
   In the description (scroll down to the 25 Apr 22:22 announcement) it says:
   
   "These AppImages launch a system installed Gimp and add Python2.7.18 and MathMap. This solution loads Gimp without changing the operating system. They are intended for current systems @ June 2022"
   
   

4. Test your setup by launching the downloaded Gimp launcher AppImage from 3. It works for me.

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Dual Boot Linux Mint Upgrade

Not too sure what happened but my LUbuntu upgrade (reinstall actually) from 18.04 to 22.04 went horribly wrong. What I ended up in the end after the 'upgrade' was a non-bootable PC with no recognisable operating system detected! I panicked obviously. Something about problems in creating a file system and unable to proceed. Nothing that made sense to me.

I reinstalled WinXP from backup, reinstalled LUbuntu 18.04 and everything was back to where it was. A big sigh of relief. Luckily. Nothing went missing or corrupted. Next course of action - backups. Before that I didn't do any as my previous Linux and Ubuntu installation were non problematic.

Linux Mint

I looked around for another distro, found Linux Mint Xfce with favourable reviews and it suites me fine with my 2GB RAM PC. I then decided to give it a go.

x264 Warning: MB Rate [489110] > level limit [245760]

I got this warning dialog box towards the end of Step 1 and Step 2 while saving my video in VirtualDub2.

Never had this before ever since I processed my videos before uploading to Dreamstime. I was stumped.

But this helps. I set the 'Level' parameter in the x264 configuration dialog box to 4.2 (from 4.1) and the warning never occurred again.

Problems with the frame rates per second (fps) of my video I think. I never had this problem with 30 fps video, but this popped up when my video was set at 60 fps.

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Aomei Backupper To The Rescue Again

I don't believe it. My boot partition on my WinXP computer got corrupted again yesterday morning. Upon startup, Windows did a chkdsk (because it says the C: partition is corrupted), deleted some index entries and it failed to successfully boot after that. The last time this similar thing happened was just some 3 months ago. Why?

But luckily Aomei Backupper came to my rescue ... again.

Restoring Aomei Backup On WinXP

I first took a backup of my Windows XP system drive (C: in this case) with Aomei Backupper Standard (the free version) last May 2019. I had never done a restore-from-backup with Aomei before as I do not have a spare hard disk drive. Restoring to my healthy WinXP partition is an option but it seems a bit too risky for me. As a consequence, this thought had been bugging me since: Will my restore from Aomei backup work?

Fast forward to 2nd March 2020. My Windows XP kept rebooting that fine morning. The login screen never appeared. I tried mounting the C: drive from Ubuntu. It failed with an error - the NTFS file system on my C: drive was totally screwed. Only one thing to do now - a full system restore from my Aomei backup.

Steps For Saving H.264 MP4 Videos In VirtualDub2

How I wish that saving my edited video files in VirtualDub2 is as simple as clicking on a single button or option like in Avidemux. Unfortunately, there isn't one.

It took me quite awhile to figure out the parameters and the steps to save my video files in the H.264 format in the MP4 container in VirtualDub2. I use the parameters in the video files that were produced by my cameras as a guide. My uploaded VirtualDub2 post-process videos were accepted by Dreamstime, no rejections based on technicalities. So I assume that what I have done must be correct.

Yes - after a lull of 2 years, I have rekindled my love affair with VirtualDub, albeit with one of its younger siblings VirtualDub2. Not bad considering that I only have a 2GB RAM, Pentium Dual Core 2.7 GHz computer and I could get my video processing done in a reasonable amount of time.

H264 Encoded MP4 Video Uploads To Dreamstime

The message board and stock video requirement page at Dreamstime says that video format should be encoded in PhotoJPeg or MotionJPeg and stored in the Quicktime .MOV video format.

But what's this that I see some MP4 stock video on Dreamstime when I do a search?

Poking around, even the upload page says that it accepts MP4 video files (picture above).

Black Blank Frames

I have to be a little more careful in my video uploads to Dreamstime. Videos with black blank frames either in the front or the back will be rejected. I just had one happening to me recently. These 4 blank frames must have been inserted by MPEG Streamclip since there was no such frames in my source video - I checked.

Goodbye Avast

This is a follow-up to my previous post.

I did a virus definition update to Avast 2 days ago. I didn't use my computer after that and had is shutdown subsequently. No problems detected, everything fine here.

Turned on my computer yesterday morning, surfed the net as I usually do, and BOOM! a blank screen and a reboot after using my computer for something like 10 minutes. This problem repeated itself 3 more times as the day progressed. Practically, I couldn't do anything with all these reboots. I tried disabling the Avast service too, but that didn't help either. The computer bombed out some 15 or 20 minutes later after reboot.

Mysterious Reboots

I had this problem last month. My PC was misbehaving and will mysteriously 'die' sometimes while using it midway (usually while web browsing - it doesn't matter which browser). All I would get is just a blank black screens and nothing moves. I did get the blue-screen-of-death but not often.

Once it halted while booting - it didn't go beyond the WinXP logo. And at another time, it suddenly rebooted while I was trying to login in.

My Stock Video Workflow

I just started shooting stock video recently, and I must say I am enjoying it. I think I am a fool if I were to ignore stock videos as the payout is much higher when compared to stock photos. As far as I could gather, we are talking about tens of dollars here for stock video sales against cents for stock photos. But still, the content matters.

Workflow

This is what I do before uploading my videos to Dreamstime. My workflow if you will.

Dreamstime prefers Quicktime .MOV container files compressed using Photo Jpeg. So this is what I aim to achieve here.

Software used

Avidemux, VirtualDub2, MPEG_Streamclip (I also installed KL QuickTimeAlternative 1.18 as I do not have the necessary QuickTime software for creating Photo JPegs in a .MOV file) and FileZilla.

Python Script To Upload Pictures To Google Photos

I was working on this Python script to upload pictures to Google Photos. Then I found out later that I couldn't get a permanent URL for my uploaded pictures - the Google Photo API doesn't provide one. And I subsequently I stopped working on it.

This little script is of no use to me. Hopefully, somebody will find some use for it. It's a waste to just throw it away since I spent quite some time working on it. "One man's junk is another man's treasure" they say.

Test Picture Upload To Flickr

Someone mentioned that the photo uploads to Flickr from Raven+ is broken (here and here). Looks like it is not. Here is an excerpt from the log for this blog post for my Flickr upload for the picture above:

Some Rumbling Going Round About Google Photos API

The following is from the OLW (Open Live Writer) Github support page dated Feb 13, 2019 by one danielpunkass.

Now, I haven't looked into the Google Photos term of service yet, so I am not too sure about the embedding-images bit. But judging by how Google is closing down is numerous software services over the last couple of years, it is not a bad idea, indeed prudent, to move away from the Blogger platform if your livelihood depends on it.

Have a read and see what you think. The problem with baseURL is valid, as mentioned in one of the links, by the way. It is only valid for 60 minutes after a picture upload (look under the heading 'Caching').

Python API Libraries For Google Photos

I thought I hit a dead-end when I couldn't find any Python API libraries for uploading my images to Google Photos via Raven+.

But a couple of hour search later via Google for "Google Photos Python Uploads" lead me to this:

• Google Photos and Albums sync with Google Photos Library API at Github from "The Google Photos API is a disaster".

• Quickstart example of how to use Google Photos API with Python also at Github from "Access Google Photo API with Python using google-api-python-client"

GIMP Scripts For Dealing With Blue And Green Fringe

My Canon Powershot SX530 HS suffers from bad Purple, Blue and Green chromatic aberration when taking pictures in high contrast area. I use Darla's Purple Fringe script for GIMP to deal with Purple chromatic aberration - some limitations but that's the best solution that I can find.

I could not find any GIMP scripts for dealing with Blue and Green chromatic aberration. So I did the next best thing: I rolled my own.

The code for the scripts are below. Once installed, it will appear under the "Script-Fu / Enhance /" menu. And one more thing: the same limitations apply as with Darla's Purple Fringe script.

Upgrading My Android x86

I have had my Android x86 version 4.3 installed in my VirtualBox since April 2014. With software upgrades being released by the day, I think its about time I have this operating system upgraded to a more recent release.

Version 7.1 r2

Version 7.1 r2 looks like a good bet, out since May 2018.

But after spending something like two hours downloading the installation ISO image, it looks like it wouldn't work with 512 MB RAM in VirtualBox - that's all I could afford in my 1GB RAM computer. There is lots of disk activity alright; it doesn't seem to stop. After waiting for something like 20 minutes and not seeing the home or setup screen, I gave up.

Installation was a breeze though. It zip right through in about a minute.

Good Old XVID

There is this problem that I have with my 7 year old Panasonic Viera LCD TV - it just can't play certain MP4 movies. The video and audio CODECs (usually H264 for video and AAC for audio) are all compatible with what the TV supports, but it just won't play.

The problem, after much digging, is that this particular Panasonic TV model only supports playing video files that are in certain video standard resolution - 360p or 720p resolution, for example. It took me many attempts, but one workaround is to convert the video CODEC into XVID/DIVX. The size of the output file may be larger, but hey, it works.

I use ffmpeg to do the audio and video codec conversion. And this is the command that I use:

Test Image Upload To PicasaWeb Via Raven+

There has been some problems with uploading images to PicasaWeb via Raven+ since January 23rd 2018. A peek into Raven+'s log says this:

[ZUploadContentPrePublishHandler] Failed to upload file 1 of 1 (F:\Temp\TEST_RAVEN.JPG)
[EXCEPTION][ZUploadContentPrePublishHandler] ZBlogAppException [Failed to upload file 'TEST_RAVEN.JPG'.([500, 'Internal Server Error', 'Internal error, try again later'])].

What does it mean? I am absolutely clueless.

Well anyway it seems to be fixed now - some 2 days later. I just managed to upload this picture a moment ago.

I'm not too sure what happened. I didn't change anything on my side, that's for sure. No official announcement from Google either.

Arrogance like Microsoft some 20 years ago? Or IBM some 30 to 40 years ago? Who knows?