<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
+ <item>
+ <title>Web browser integration of VLC with Bittorrent support</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_browser_integration_of_VLC_with_Bittorrent_support.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_browser_integration_of_VLC_with_Bittorrent_support.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 21 Oct 2018 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Bittorrent is as far as I know, currently the most efficient way to
+distribute content on the Internet. It is used all by all sorts of
+content providers, from national TV stations like
+<a href="https://www.nrk.no/">NRK</a>, Linux distributors like
+<a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> and
+<a href="https://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu</a>, and of course the
+<a href="https://archive.org/">Internet archive</A>.
+
+<p>Almost a month ago
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/vlc-plugin-bittorrent">a new
+package adding Bittorrent support to VLC</a> became available in
+Debian testing and unstable. To test it, simply install it like
+this:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+apt install vlc-plugin-bittorrent
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>Since the plugin was made available for the first time in Debian,
+several improvements have been made to it. In version 2.2-4, now
+available in both testing and unstable, a desktop file is provided to
+teach browsers to start VLC when the user click on torrent files or
+magnet links. The last part is thanks to me finally understanding
+what the strange x-scheme-handler style MIME types in desktop files
+are used for. By adding x-scheme-handler/magnet to the MimeType entry
+in the desktop file, at least the browsers Firefox and Chromium will
+suggest to start VLC when selecting a magnet URI on a web page. The
+end result is that now, with the plugin installed in Buster og Sid,
+one can visit any
+<a href="https://archive.org/details/CopyingIsNotTheft1080p">Internet
+Archive page with movies</a> using a web browser and click on the
+torrent link to start streaming the movie.</p>
+
+<p>Note, there is still some misfeatures in the plugin. One is the
+fact that it will hang and
+<a href="https://github.com/johang/vlc-bittorrent/issues/13">block VLC
+from exiting until the torrent streaming starts</a>. Another is the
+fact that it
+<a href="https://github.com/johang/vlc-bittorrent/issues/9">will pick
+and play a random file in a multi file torrent</a>. This is not
+always the video file you want. Combined with the first it can be a
+bit hard to get the video streaming going. But when it work, it seem
+to do a good job.</p>
+
+<p>For the Debian packaging, I would love to find a good way to test
+if the plugin work with VLC using autopkgtest. I tried, but do not
+know enough of the inner workings of VLC to get it working. For now
+the autopkgtest script is only checking if the .so file was
+successfully loaded by VLC. If you have any suggestions, please
+submit a patch to the Debian bug tracking system.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>Release 0.2 of free software archive system Nikita announced</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Release_0_2_of_free_software_archive_system_Nikita_announced.html</link>
requiring me to accept "privacy terms" to allow myself to measure my
own health.</p>
-<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Sharing images with friends and family using RSS and EXIF/XMP metadata</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sharing_images_with_friends_and_family_using_RSS_and_EXIF_XMP_metadata.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sharing_images_with_friends_and_family_using_RSS_and_EXIF_XMP_metadata.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 31 Jul 2018 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>For a while now, I have looked for a sensible way to share images
-with my family using a self hosted solution, as it is unacceptable to
-place images from my personal life under the control of strangers
-working for data hoarders like Google or Dropbox. The last few days I
-have drafted an approach that might work out, and I would like to
-share it with you. I would like to publish images on a server under
-my control, and point some Internet connected display units using some
-free and open standard to the images I published. As my primary
-language is not limited to ASCII, I need to store metadata using
-UTF-8. Many years ago, I hoped to find a digital photo frame capable
-of reading a RSS feed with image references (aka using the
-&lt;enclosure&gt; RSS tag), but was unable to find a current supplier
-of such frames. In the end I gave up that approach.</p>
-
-<p>Some months ago, I discovered that
-<a href="https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/">XScreensaver</a> is able to
-read images from a RSS feed, and used it to set up a screen saver on
-my home info screen, showing images from the Daily images feed from
-NASA. This proved to work well. More recently I discovered that
-<a href="https://kodi.tv">Kodi</a> (both using
-<a href="https://www.openelec.tv/">OpenELEC</a> and
-<a href="https://libreelec.tv">LibreELEC</a>) provide the
-<a href="https://github.com/grinsted/script.screensaver.feedreader">Feedreader</a>
-screen saver capable of reading a RSS feed with images and news. For
-fun, I used it this summer to test Kodi on my parents TV by hooking up
-a Raspberry PI unit with LibreELEC, and wanted to provide them with a
-screen saver showing selected pictures from my selection.</p>
-
-<p>Armed with motivation and a test photo frame, I set out to generate
-a RSS feed for the Kodi instance. I adjusted my <a
-href="https://freedombox.org/">Freedombox</a> instance, created
-/var/www/html/privatepictures/, wrote a small Perl script to extract
-title and description metadata from the photo files and generate the
-RSS file. I ended up using Perl instead of python, as the
-libimage-exiftool-perl Debian package seemed to handle the EXIF/XMP
-tags I ended up using, while python3-exif did not. The relevant EXIF
-tags only support ASCII, so I had to find better alternatives. XMP
-seem to have the support I need.</p>
-
-<p>I am a bit unsure which EXIF/XMP tags to use, as I would like to
-use tags that can be easily added/updated using normal free software
-photo managing software. I ended up using the tags set using this
-exiftool command, as these tags can also be set using digiKam:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-exiftool -headline='The RSS image title' \
- -description='The RSS image description.' \
- -subject+=for-family photo.jpeg
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>I initially tried the "-title" and "keyword" tags, but they were
-invisible in digiKam, so I changed to "-headline" and "-subject". I
-use the keyword/subject 'for-family' to flag that the photo should be
-shared with my family. Images with this keyword set are located and
-copied into my Freedombox for the RSS generating script to find.</p>
-
-<p>Are there better ways to do this? Get in touch if you have better
-suggestions.</p>
-
<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
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