Taglist - A VIM Plugin for browsing the source code

Browsing the source codes in VIM can be made easy using the plugin "Taglist". It supports many programming languages like C, C++, C#, Python, Java etc. (for the complete list refer An intro on Taglist).

Download and install the taglist plugin for VIM from,
http://vim-taglist.sourceforge.net/

After installing the plugin, we can set taglist variables in the '~/.vimrc' file based on our requirement. For the details on taglist variables, refer taglist usage.

Some taglist variables in my '~/.vimrc',

"Set to automatically open the taglist window on VIM startup
let Tlist_Auto_Open = 1
"Set for the vim to exit when only the taglist window is present
let Tlist_Exit_OnlyWindow = 1
"Set for reducing the number of empty lines in the taglist window
let Tlist_Compact_Format = 1

Playing .mkv files with DTS audio codec on Sony Bravia

I have already blogged on how to play mkv files on "Sony Bravia HD 3D LED KDL-40HX750" TV. But for playing mkv files with DTS audio codec, there is one extra step we have to do before converting the mkv files to the m2ts files.

We need to convert the DTS audio codec inside the mkv file to AC3 audio codec. This is because, the DTS audio codec is not supported by the Sony Bravia KDL-40HX750. I used the script mkvdts2ac3.sh by Jake Wharton and Chris Hoekstra. This script converts the DTS track in the mkv file to AC3 track. And the usage of this script is very simple.

Get the script mkvdts2ac3.sh (on my ubuntu 12.04 LTS) as follows:

wget https://raw.github.com/JakeWharton/mkvdts2ac3/master/mkvdts2ac3.sh

Give the mkv file with the DTS audio codec as the input to the script as shown below:

The conversion starts and gets completed by displaying the summary on the conversion process as shown below:

Now the mkv file can be converted to the m2ts file with only the AC3 audio codec.

Thus obtained m2ts file can be played on "Sony Bravia HD 3D LED KDL-40HX750" TV.

Patents search

'www.freepatentsonline.com' can be used for Patents search. In this site, we could list down the patents based on several search conditions. I.e. If we want to list down the patents filed by indian inventors, we should use ICN/IN in the search term. ICN stands for 'Inventors Country Name' and IN stands for 'India' (Country Code Table). Similarly the patents database can be searched for several other conditions.

For example, to search patents for 'heterogeneous multiprocessor' filed by indian inventors in-between the period 2007 to 2009, the search condition should be as follows:

APD/01/01/2007->12/31/2009 AND ICN/IN AND (heterogeneous AND multiprocessor)

The links listed below can be used to get introduced to the search condition keywords:

• http://www.freepatentsonline.com/search.html#fields
• http://www.uspto.gov/patft/help/helpflds.htm

Also consider whether you would require 'Word Stemming' option enabled for your search. By default, it is enabled. Enabling this for a search term, it would search for all variants of a search term. If you would like narrow down the search in particular to your search term, then you just disable it. (for more info on this)