Category: Things I Read

Earth’s magnetic field is acting up and geologists don’t know why

Weird. Look at the map… That sure is something.

In the meantime, scientists are working to understand why the magnetic field is changing so dramatically. Geomagnetic pulses, like the one that happened in 2016, might be traced back to ‘hydromagnetic’ waves arising from deep in the core1. And the fast motion of the north magnetic pole could be linked to a high-speed jet of liquid iron beneath Canada2.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00007-1

Youtube-Download Scripting (youtube-dl)

I just realized a wonderful feature in Youtube-dl: ytsearch:$SEARCHTERM. If you lack the context, scroll down.

I am using Nextcloud Notes and youtube-dl for automated downloads of Youtube-Videos that I want to watch later or for Music that I autoconvert to MP3s and put them in playlists (yeah I am old-fashioned, I still have tons of Vinyl). So if you enter youtube-dl ytsearch:Feilner, this gem will download the first video found – which is my presentation about Mythbusting documentation:

mfeilner@fibonacci:~> youtube-dl ytsearch:Feilner
[youtube:search] query “Feilner”: Downloading page 1
[download] Downloading playlist: Feilner
[youtube:search] playlist Feilner: Collected 1 video ids (downloading 1 of them)
[download] Downloading video 1 of 1
[youtube] Cpug8Iqw3f8: Downloading webpage
[youtube] Cpug8Iqw3f8: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] Cpug8Iqw3f8: Downloading MPD manifest
[dashsegments] Total fragments: 376
[download] Destination: Mythbusting Documentation – Markus Feilner-Cpug8Iqw3f8.f137.mp4
[download]  10.6% of ~323.89MiB at  2.59MiB/s ETA 02:07

After a few minutes, you’ll find the mp4 in your working directory. Guess I have to experiment with that more thoroughly… Update: I just found the beautiful option to tell ytsearch: how many files it should retrieve from the search: youtube-dl ytsearch10:Feilner will download the top ten video files from the search result, ytsearch20 twenty.

But what I also do is: I am using Nextcloud Notes to add music, video, and other stuff that I want downloaded on a local machine. I can add links and stuff to this .txt file from my smartphone or all my machines and laptops. Have a look at Notes, it’s awesome. Only one caveat: First line is always the name of the file. Markup is supported, but I don’t need that. Here’s my download-script that omits the first line and does some path magic – you can see I am not a coder, but it works like a charm.


#!/bin/bash
# download Youtube videos from a list in a txt file and call scripts to convert them
IFS=”¬”
if [ -z $1 ]
then
INPUT=/home/mfeilner/Nextcloud/Notes/Youtube.txt
else
INPUT=$1
fi
echo $INPUT
INFILE=/tmp/infile
awk ‘NR>1’ $INPUT > $INFILE
TEMPDIR=~/Temp/ytd/`date +%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M`
mkdir -p $TEMPDIR
cd $TEMPDIR
while IFS= read -r line
do
youtube-dl “”$line””
done < “$INFILE”
/home/mfeilner/Nextcloud/config/bin/mp42mp3
mkdir MP3; mv *.mp3 MP3/; cd MP3
/home/mfeilner/Nextcloud/config/bin/mkplaylist $TEMPDIR

mp42mp3 converts lots of video formats (it will be improved, yes), and mkplaylist creates m3u files. I also have a mp3tidy script that cleans up filenames by normalizing them and does some basic id3tagging.

#!/bin/bash
# convert media formats
IFS=”¬”
for file in *mp4
do ffmpeg -i “$file” `basename -s mp4 $file`mp3;
done
for file in *webm
do ffmpeg -i “$file” `basename -s webm $file`mp3;
done
for file in *mkv
do ffmpeg -i “$file” `basename -s mkv $file`mp3;
done
for file in *m4a
do ffmpeg -i “$file” `basename -s m4a $file`mp3;
done

I have some more scripts running that tidy up filenames and tags and stuff, but they are too embarassing to publish (yet).

For those that lack the context: Youtube-dl is a wonderful Video downloader for youtube. It also supports direct encoding to mp3, but I prefer to have hands on myself if I need it, that’s why ffmeg comes in handy.  And because of the nasty first line in Youtube.txt, I decided to not use Youtube-dls read-from-file mechanism.

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpug8Iqw3f8

downloads the Feilner video from the example above. Ffmpeg could encode it to mp3 so that there’s only the audio, creating a podcast e.g. for the car. Rename would help stripping unwanted stuff from the filename and there’s some tools out there to change the tags properly.

To get rid of the Youtube-ID in the filename and for basic id3tagging I do this:


#!/bin/bash
# normalize Youtube-Downloaded MP3 files after conversion from Mkv or similar,
# ID3-Tag them by adding filename to Artist, Title and Album fields.
IFS=”¬”
INFILE=/tmp/infile
OUTFILE=/tmp/outfile
TEMPDIR=~/Temp/ytd/date +%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M
FILENAME=/tmp/filename
CHARCOUNT=17
ls *mp3 -1 > $INFILE
mkdir -p $TEMPDIR
while IFS=”²” read -r line
do
echo “”$line”” | rev |cut -c $CHARCOUNT- | rev > $FILENAME
mv “”$line”” $TEMPDIR/`cat $FILENAME`.mp3
id3tag -a=`cat $FILENAME` -A=`cat $FILENAME` -s=`cat $FILENAME`
done <$INFILE
mv $TEMPDIR ~/Downloads/New
rm $OUTFILE $INFILE $FILENAME

What if #Trump’s #waroniran only is meant to …

… divert our attention from Australia and the #climatecatastrophy? People waking up to the horror is the worst thing that could possibly happen to most of his sponsors… unless they really want to start the apocalypse now, full-featured and thus they are glad their president is attacking their Satan.

Big oil, evangelists and arms manufacturers. Well who of them would not benefit from war and climate horror?
This is the recent video that made me think about this from a different angle. It’s after the Iran attack from Jan 3, 2020 : 

 

 

#Australiaburning – the biggest human caused fire ever – compare the size

And again it’s the Guardian that has made a great tool to show how bad it really is. Boys, girls, this is gonna come to your place, too. Sooner or later, one way or the other. This is crazy. Happy new decade, to all of you. It could be so easy: No flights, no beef, less kids. Everyone can help. Here’s the current size of the fires compared to Regensburg, Southern Germany: 

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/datablog/ng-interactive/2019/dec/07/how-big-are-the-fires-burning-on-the-east-coast-of-australia-interactive-map?lat=49.02040448&lng=12.12002478

 

#Ziryab, die Amsel von Cordoba – ein Influencer des Mittelalters

Ziryab – der Kulturrevolutionär – Bazar andalus

Seine Neuerungen der vornehmen Lebensart und Kultur wurden aufgrund ihrer praktischen Vorteile und Ästhetik sehr rasch von Adel und Bevölkerung übernommen und bald auch bis in die Herrscherhäuser der christlichen europäischen Länder übermittelt. Auch seine Art, sich zu kleiden fand schnell Nachahmer. Ziryab kleidete sich je nach Jahreszeit unterschiedlich. Er legte fest, dass man sich von Mai bis September in Weiß kleidete und die Stoffe mit dunklen und bunten Farben sowie die Lederkleidung den Wintermonaten vorbehalten seien.Dank Ziryab legte man in Córdoba nun auch Wert auf gepflegtes Haar, manikürte Fingernägel und weiche, zarte Haut. In al-Andalus führte er auch das Schachspiel und das Polospiel ein.