Streaming to YouTube and Facebook at the same time by using OBS Studio

This has been asked and there are than one (paid) solutions to this problem. 

In this article, I'm going to introduce a totally free method. 

I ain't going to go into the steps but if you know how to do streaming to YouTube/FB, you will be able to understand this method easily.  If you don't know how to do streaming to a single platform, you won't probably ask this question, right?

To make everything simple, the whole concept is to do streaming on a stream.  I guess some people might already know how it goes, if you still don't get it, please read on.

First of all, you will use OBS to stream to either YouTube or Facebook as usual, let say you will use OBS to stream to YouTube first.

Now, you've a YouTube stream and now you will on to have it on Facebook live as well.  To do that, you use a separate computer to play that YouTube stream.  And then on this computer, start another OBS, capture that YouTube stream with OBS and then stream it to Facebook, QED. 

That's what I meant by streaming a stream.

淘寶直運

淘寶近來都幾積極推直運。

最初係搞咩直運咭，十五蚊人仔，三次十五蚊以下直運免費，另外又有啲紅包，結果我就試咗。

結果發現，我買三件貨，有時會分三次送，有時會集埋一包先送，都幾煩。

無所謂喇，都幾扺用。

但最後我用晒三次之後就無再買，因為覺得佢地鼓勵我買野既方法。平時真係有野買先買，仲要儲到有幾件先一次過買。

後來到雙十一，佢有得抽奬，感覺人人都抽到，我抽到五十蚊人仔，咁都好丫，唔使錢，咪照用咯，最後咪一啲貨用直運，以五十蚊為上限，其餘用返集運。

當日發現好似貴咗，運好少野就用完五十蚊，簡單講，五十蚊只得兩件唔係咁重既貨！不過心諗，唔使錢，是但喇！

直到某天....

收到電話話送貨上嚟屋企！仲話要收二十蚊送貨費，我話唔制，叫佢改送自提點！誰不知，自提點都一樣要收二十蚊！立時有中計既感覺！

後來發現，依家直運 default 係送去你家，而以前我買直運卡，那時 default 係自提點，而且係唔使附加費！

似乎真係一個局嚟！我諗唔到點解要用直運了...

就算無呢個局，直運都唔吸引，首先，你買野時要考慮清楚，一次過落單！無咗彈性！

直運唯一方便係唔使等齊貨再人手叫佢集運！但其實快唔得幾多，亦唔方便得多好多！

簡單講，用返集運喇！又平，又簡單，亦差不多速度！

Dropbox installation error 2

I faced these twice, once on a new Windows 10 machine and another occasion on a fresh re-installation on a Windows 8.1 Pro machine.

A simple google search reveals nothing useful, for example, running the offline installer.

But then the no-brainer solution works flawlessly, i.e. do a Windows update.

QED.

Top Link Express (匯購八方)

幾年前, 淘寶用得不多, 因為運費很貴, 每件分開來寄, 至少都要 $33 或以上, 還有許多店不發香港... 例如一個手機套, 在淘寶便宜很多, 但加上運費, 立即就貴過在香港買... 此外, 直運到家並不方便, 因為家裡總不是常常有人, 另外寄到往宅區還有附加費

後來有了淘寶官方集運, 可以把不同的貨品集合起來, 一次過寄來香港, 大批東西都是幾十元運費就可以了, 輕便的, 可以便利店取貨, 輕重的, 可以到自提點, 家裡不用有人等收貨

早幾天開始試用非官方集運, 價錢更便宜, 而且倘若是買一件貨品, 首重還差不多減半呢! 此外, 就算是比較大的物件, 也可以寄到街坊小店, 所以提貨的地點也方便了, 不必都到指定的自提點, 而且辦公時間亦較長呢!

Added on 30/June:

某次我在同一間商鋪買了兩件東西, 誰一知店主分開兩次來寄出! 我記得有次用官方集運, 結果其中一件收不到, 因為選轉運時只看見一個訂單!

但用非官方集運就簡單了, 因為凡收貨地址有你的會員編號, 那些貨物都會出現在轉運單上! 這對於重新發貨也很有用呢!

The "Samsung T118" Tablet

It's being marketed in taobao or some other online shops, the price is exceptionally low for a tablet with its advertising specifications.  It's just too good to be true, and thus, it's not real indeed.

To highlight a few:

1. It's not really from Samsung

2. The LCD has low contrast which could be frustrating when compared with modern LCD.  The viewing angle could be rather limited.  The color depth and dynamic range is rather poor.

3. The CPU is not quad-core as advertised, it's dual core only.

4. The CPU is not as fast as advertised, good only for simple applications, could be a bit slow by modern standard.

Here is a snapshot of the benchmark result:

Having said that, it's a very good deal as long as you could live with the above.  The bottom line is, you got more than what you actually paid for.

--

On 淘寶, 電子產品, 順豐, 香港

On the contrary of what you can see from the Internet, the above combination is possible provided that the seller declares at the custom properly.  It just add complications which common vendors are not willing to spend the extra-effort.

即係話, 順豐可以發電子產品嚟香港, 只係個發件人要報關, 仲要去特定地點寄件

Online Photo Editing

http://pixlr.com/editor/

This is a very powerful online photo editing website.  If you're using a netbook like me or with a less than powerful desktop PC, this website is going to be great for you.  No installation, fast startup and powerful indeed.

When people were switching their local storage to the cloud, we can even switch our application software to the cloud.  It's a full realization of the concept that "the network is the computer" as proposed by Sun Microsystems.

Highly recommended.

Pulling commodity from applications

It's interesting to see that for the last five to ten years, people have been pulling computer applications from computer to make standalone products like VCD player, DVD player, mp3 player, etc.  All these were very successful.

However, the trend seems to be reversed these days when smart-phones and tablets were getting popular.  You will probably not use a standalone mp3 player, and you will probably not use a standalone DVD player, instead, you watch movies and you listen to music via your tablets there days.

While it could be nice if a single machine could do everything for you, however, it could even be better if things just get smaller.  For example, even your tablet is powerful enough to play music but then you will still need a headphone/earphone!  What if your headphone/earphone could play the music by itself?  If it can, your tablet will not be necessary any more.

Content-wise, putting stuff in the cloud for centralized storage and manipulation should be the best.

Amazon and foreign currency

I just realized that Amazon offered to pay in HKD (or your native currency) instead of USD, this seems to be very convenient at the first glance, but the evil is in the detail.

Yes, they will charge you HKD (or your native currency) and you will know the exact amount that you will have to pay very clearly. However, if you do a simple exercise with a calculator, you will immediately know that it's not going to be a good deal. I suggest you to try it out yourself.

I would advise you to use USD for the payment, and your credit card will do the conversion for you. The exchange rate of bank is far more reasonable in my experience.

Paypal currency switching

I've some paypal balance in USD. Transfering it to the local bank would not incur a charge but the exchange rate is pretty bad. Therefore, it makes more sense to use it to buy something else.

Today, I tried to buy something in GBP, however, paypal would not allow me to use my paypal balance in USD. After some google work, I realize that if the amount to be paid is more than your balance would allow, it will not let you use the balance but instead, it will charge completely by the credit card!

To solve this problem, I asked the vendor to separate the paypal request into two parts. The first part is less than my paypal balance, so that paypal would allow me to use my existing balance. And the second part is to use credit card.

Quite simple, but of course, since there's a currency switching, I expect poor exchange rate again.

Broadband via Mobile Phone Network

A few months ago, I found that my Internet connection failed. After many different investigation, it was found that the cable was broken by the renovation work down stair. After millions of negotiation, the broadband provider agreed to lay the cable for me again but we had a very hard time to do that on the original trunking. After that, my internet connection becomes very unstable all the time.

Finally, I decided to switch to a wireless based solution. It provides broadband services via 3G mobile phone network, and it also provides conventional home telephone service as well. What they provided is a wireless gateway, which sits in the middle of the 3G network, and on the other hand, to provide internet services via LAN or Wi Fi.

The good thing about this technology is that, you don't have to lay any cable. There're virtually "nothing" to fix in case of network failure, except that small wireless gateway. The speed of the internet might vary over the day, it could go really fast like my last ISP (based on Cable TV network), or quite slow... but it's still fast enough for youtube, etc.

For me, stability is more important than speed. And I found it hard when the network had problem, you have to stay at home, to wait for the technician to come and fix the whole thing for you, and that requires a lot of waiting and negotiation. Troublesome enough for me.

I guess that I will stay with this kind of service. And another good thing about this service is that, you can move your house without re-apply another service. Mobile phone network can reach any places virtually these days, so it sets the internet and your home phone free.

Network Convergence

We have the following networks:

1. telephone (fax)
2. television
3. internet
4. mobile phone

Telephone Company: ADSL is to use the telephone network for internet connection, and to go a step further, video on demand can be made to work with ADSL. In that sense, the telephone network is now to provide TV, internet as well.

Cable TV: Cable modem is to use the cable TV network for internet connection, and voice over IP can be made to put telephone services on the same network. In that sense, the cable TV network is now to provide TV, telephone and Internet.

Mobile Network: Recently, I've subscribed a service which is based on mobile phone network to provide internet access, as well as conventional telephone service. It's not very fast, but then I believe it's fast enough for most people. Of course, it can support video on demand as well.

Who will win finally in the war of network convergence? Personally, I think Internet will rule in the form of optical fibre services provider since it's fastest and thus it can provide all sorts of services nicely, and the second candidate should be the mobile phone network, since nothing else could replace it.

The old fashion way about downloading

Last night a friend of mine asked me to have a look on their internet connection, I did a ping and it works, and apparently, it was the browser which failed. Therefore, I proceeded to try Firefox, however, it was broken as well. So, how can I download another browser for them?

Yes, the answer is the old fashion ftp which is available even for command line!

Among all the browsers which I tried, only Firefox and also Mozilla still got ftp site which easy-to-guess name, i.e. ftp.mozilla.org

On (cleanly) removing the old Firefox and reinstall the new one which I just fetched from the ftp, it does not work still. So, I tried to install mozilla, and it works!

Afterward, I have also downloaded the google browser for them, just as a backup. But then it requires another browser first and in that case, it's mozilla.

As a summary, old fashion technology still has its place, especially when the new fancy stuff failed badly.

Problem with Software Updates

Software updates seem to be a great feature, and yes, it should be. However, if you have a computer that won't be booted up frequently, you run into big trouble.

For example, I'm not a frequent notebook user. My notebook is sitting idle for most of its life in my shelf. When I need to go out with it, I will bring it along, and it won't happen more than once every few months. I guess that you already know what I mean. When I need to use it, I will boot it up, after the booting process, the antivirus software checks for update, the operating system checks for update, etc.

The updates are usually large both in terms of size and number! Since I'm essentially doing all those updates gathered a few months at all once! Guess what, it renders my notebook essentially useless for over tens minutes at least! This is just to download and apply those updates!

So, be sure to pull out your notebook once every week in order to keep it updated, otherwise, when you need to use it, you can't until after all those updates!

Cable modem and Signal Splitter

One day I found that my internet connection is having problem. What is so hard under this situation is that, I cannot even find the customer server phone number! I've to dig through the pile of documents to find out that number.

The guy came, and after checking, he said that the signal was too strong. He added a signal splitter there and everything go fine afterward. Interesting.

Until after several months afterward, it happens again! This time for the same reason, so that guy added another signal splitter there. The first one was a 1-2 splitter, and the second one is a 1-3 splitter, so I'm effectively using 1/6 of the original signal as I did in the first day!

That guy is helpful, he even explain to me why. Since the analog signal was too strong that it saturates, and that's why signal splitters work.

Extension tube for macro photography

Another item which I ordered from Deal Extreme is a Canon macro extension tube. This one is truely cheap and you don't have to consider before buying one. The closest alternative should be the one from Kenko and the Kenko is a step up from this one for sure, since the Kenko will allow you to change aperture, and it also retains the auto-focus ability of the lens. Of course, it comes with a price. Guess what, the Kenko is 10 times more expensive! That's why I buy this one without any thought.

To adjust the aperture, you can put the lens on your DSLR without the extension tube. Set the aperture of your lens (say in Aperture Priority mode), then press-and-hold the deep of field preview button on the camera, and then remove your lens at the same time. Done.

To adjust the focus, remember to switch your lens to manual focus mode, and you can do it by hand. People always said for macro photography, manual focus is always desirable. Simple, right.

For macro photography, we are interested to know the magnification of your setup. I've found a method to find out the magnification here. To skip all the detail, here we goes:

1. Find out the original magnification of your lens here.

Suppose we are using a 50mm f1.8 II lens, the maximum magnification is 0.15

With this value, we can calculate the effective built-in extension (X) by solving this equation:

X / 50 = 0.15

So, we have the value of X = 7.5mm

And now the new magnification is the length of your extension tube.suppose it's 25mm so the new effective extension will be X + 25 = 32.5mm

So, put the value back into the magnification equation:

Maximum Magnification = 32.5 / 50 = 0.65

Simple? Yes!

Here are some of my first shots:

An illuminating switch:-


Guess what?


That's it, the same lens without the extension tube:-


All hand held, and very rough focusing.

Bulk pack battery from Deal Extreme

This is my first order, items are quite nicely packed and it arrived pretty quickly, too.

In this order, I bought two packs of cheap battery:




They are LR44 and CR2032, and they are probably the most common models. As you could see, these are big packs and I expect that they can last for years. Given they are so cheap, it's good to keep some at home and when they're needed, I can always find them immediately.

Highly recommended.

When a notebook becomes a netbook

Many years ago I bought a Sony Vaio U3, and by then there's no such thing as netbook. This is a notebook at that time with a very small size, a 933MHz CPU, running 256M memory (later upgraded to 512M), and a 20G hard drive. I love it because it is so small and portable, but yet it's running Windows XP and I had also installed Linux to it.

Recently, I have a chance to put it along with a netbook side by side, and it's indeed even smaller than that! The configuration is similar as well!

An interesting online shop

When I wanted to buy something which are unavailable or they are just too hard to find locally, I will go for ebay usually, but I come across this nice one today:

http://www.dealextreme.com/

On future checking, it's a Hong Kong based company! It offers free shipping for most products, and their pricing is very competitive. I didn't actually buy something from them until now, but I found their "uncensored" user reviews extremely useful, it's simply more useful than ebay rating, for it's just more product oriented. Negative product comment can be found easily, so those were not fake reviews.

And better yet, this is a real company, rather than most ebay sellers who are just doing home based business. Another plus for those who are new to internet shopping.

Paypal

I have been using paypal for more than 6 years.

Paypal is very convenient if you buy/sell 2nd hand products online. It's pretty secure if you use it correctly. For example, once I bought a rather expensive thing, and the my credit card company called me to confirm the payment. You can say that it is the credit card company which did a great job, but then I would also say, it works perfectly together with paypal. I never got any problem about paypal within these years.

Paypal has quite a heavy charge. To help to lower this charge, I have two paypal accounts. My first account is a personal account, with this type of account, you can pay by using your credit cards and they will charge you nothing. You can receive money from other without paying to paypal as well, however, that limits to fund which is already in paypal, i.e. non-credit card fund. So, I usually use this account to receive money of this type and I won't withdraw money (i.e. transfer to your bank account) out from paypal so that I can use the balance whenever required.

My second account is a Premier account. This kind of account will be charged by paypal whenever you receive money from any one. However, this is the only way to receive credit card fund, so sometimes when I have no choice, I will use this account. So if you are an active seller of 2nd hand stuff, or an active ebayer seller or something alike, this kind of account is a must.

Notebook computer vs. Mobile phone

With the fast growing popularity of Netbook, we really have to re-think the whole thing from a "user case" point of view.

I have been using a very small notebook PC (Sony Vaio U3) since 4-5 years ago. Why I was buying that smal notebook? It's because I understand that mobility is the first most important thing when buying a notebook computer! For anything which is either too big or too heavy, you won't be using it very soon.

As a mobile computer, you will want to use it for:

• Presentation: so it can run OpenOffice.org or any other presentation software, and it comes with a VGA socket to connect to a projector
• Email: you will want to stay connected when you are away from home and office, so it should be able to let you connected to the Internet, etc
• Web browsing: you will want to check your web based email like gmail, etc.

The best computer is the one which you can use most, it's available everywhere. So, portability is the king here. If you have a very powerful notebook which can virtually replace your desktop, but it's too big and too heavy, I believe that it will end up as your desktop PC.

However, the above situation seems to change a little bit with the advancement on mobile phone. Now my mobile phone is Wi Fi enabled, it comes with a web browser, and you can check email with that. You can even open your presentation file there, so it seems like it virtually replace my notebook?

Yes, nearly, I would say... the last bit is the VGA socket, I would say!

Frankly, it's about to replace some of the functions of my desktop PC. For example, if I just want to check email or so, I would now simply use my phone, since it has virtually zero boot up time. That alone makes it the prime choice for checking email. However, if you need to make a long reply, a notebook/netbook or a desktop PC will still be the better choice.