Wow! No other expletive comes close to describing how much fun I had last weekend when I went over to Gogarth with Chris, Ben, Andrea, Owen and Julie.

Chris and I set off early on the Friday around 08:00 after a short delay as Chris finished off his packing. A clear run over the Snake Pass got us to Glossop where we stopped for beer and wine before we hit the road and ripped round Manchester and over into Wales where our enthusiasm took a down-turn as we passed through a few showers of rain, some of which can be quite heavy. As a consequence we decided to nip down to Llanberis to check out the gear shops (new cam and various krabs were purchased) and have a bite to eat in the (in)famous Pete's Eats. The rain got heavier as we left Llanberis but we kept our hopes up as the weather can be so much different on the coast.

Found the campsite pretty easily thanks to the Google Maps Mobile application on the phone and as it was dry decided to pitch the tent before ditching some bags and heading off to Holyhead Mountain for a climb. T'was pretty windy at the car-park, and even more so up at the crag, but we geared up and I led a VS 4c up a corner crack that wasn't quite as easy as it looked from the ground. Upon topping out we both felt a few spots of rain, so after Chris reached the top we decided to dash back down and scarpper back to the car before the big grey wall approaching from the south-west hit us. Fortunately it never did.

Before heading back to the campsite we took a wander down to the lighthouse at South Stack and watched the birds soaring on the exceptionally strong winds that were hitting the cliffs.

The geology on show was quite amazing, and the bridge looked like it was a large Mecano set!

Back at the campsite it wasn't long before we were joined by Ben and Andrea who had spent Thursday night in North Wales and eaten in Llanberis before coming over to Hollyhead. As Ben and Andrea had grabbed a bite to eat in the ever popular Pete's Eats we adjourned to the Paddlers Rest (a whole two minutes walk from the tents!) for the evening where Chris and I grabbed some food and a few pints were consumed over several games of pool. With climbing on the cards for the next day none of us were too late to bed.

The next morning was gorgeous and as I was up early I went for a walk to the beach near the campsite.

There was a lady setting up her kayak to head out paddling around the headlands so I hun around and snapped a few pictures before heading back to the campsite to see if anyone else was awake.

Upon arrival I found Ben itching to get going and wondering if Chris was up yet. He must have been awake and listening as I went to rouse him from the tent only to be met by Chris on his way out. A short breakfast and some strong coffee for the others and we headed off to Castel Head South of South Stack lighthouse.

The abseil point was fairly obvious by virtue of the seven odd pegs and numerous bits of tat hanging from them, but it was still backed up by a nut in a crack and a static line was dropped down. Owen, Ben and Julie abbed down and attached themselves to the start of Rap, and after making sure Chris was happy with the abseiling (it had been a while since he'd done any) I set off gingerly down the rope. Stopping on the mid-way ledge to snap a shot of the others. As I left the ledge I started moving leftwards towards the start of our climb (Lighthouse Arete), but after a while realised I wasn't going to get there abseiling and would have to climb across attached to the abseil rope! I scoped out where I was aiming for and slowly set off, letting out slack through the prussik which was the only thing that would stop me sliding to the end of the rope and into the sea if I came off! Took a few minutes but I was grateful to arrive and quickly set up a belay which once sorted allowed me to relax. Signalled to Chris that I was safe and he should come down. As he made his way down the rope he got to a simliar point (although a little higher) where I told him he now had to traverse across to reach me. The look on his face indicated that he wasn't completely sure about doing this, but there was little else to do! Slowly but surely he made his way across whilst I snapped pictures of Owen and Julie getting a soaking from a few rather large waves.

Getting wet!

As I was attached to the belay and the second pitch was harder Chris got to lead the first pitch which went straight up a largeish crack to a ledge just under an undercut hanging groove (second pitch). He took his time, in no small part due to the extreme exposure on the relatively sheer rock-face and the fact that he'd never done any sea-cliff climbing before (nothing like baptism by fire!). A gentle reminder that placing some gear might be a good idea was required, but after that he was fine. I followed up and we swapped over the gear for the next pitch and I led on through with some nice moves through the overhang and significantly less exposure in the corner/groove. I was going to go all the way to the top, but for ease of rope management stopped and bought Chris up and he finished the final short scramble. Ben, Owen and Julie had only just finished Rap, and Owen and Ben abseiled down to do the climb we'd just done. Chris wasn't keen to jump straight back on another climb which was ok so we sat around chatting with Julie before she headed back to the campsite to meet Andrea (and drink some wine!). Chris and I sat around chilling out watching the birds soaring on the updrafts and beautiful sky in front of us.

Back at the campsite not only had Andrea and Julie been drinking wine they'd been preparing a lovely veggie curry. Squeezed into Owen & Julie's camper van we tucked into popadums, chilli pickle, mango chutney and an “authentic” Thai salad I'd made before the main course was served. We we're all too stuffed for the cake and custard desert so adjourned to the Padler's Rest (again) for the evening where Flash (Ben & Andrea's greyhound) was quite a hit. A few games of pool ensued but no-one was that late to bed. As Sunday was the BIG day.

Sunday was an earlier start as we had to pack up the tent, but everything was done and we were off into Holyhead by around 09.30. Passing through we headed along the marina and out towards a country park by the old quarries that were worked to provide the stone for the harbour defenses. As we set off on the track up the hill there was a toad sunning itself on the gravel.

It was a really clear day and the view back over Holyhead was pretty good.

The slog up the hill was relatively easy and we found the top of Wen Zawn without a problem, it wasn't too hard since there were a couple of other climbers racking up! We quickly followed suit. Owen and Ben were a bit quicker so set off to arrange the abseil rope and we all waited patiently to descend into the Zawn. Whilst chatting to the other climbers it transpired that one of them, Pete, was the guy who'd served me in Joe Brown's on the Friday. He was mainly into his bouldering, but his friend had dragged him out for some sea-cliff adventures, like me he wasn't too sure about the abseiling, and its a fairly looong abseil down.

I went down first and arranged a belay half-way up the first pitch of Dream of White Horses as the tide was still too high to get to the bottom. Chris joined me and we then spent 30-40 minutes waiting for Ben and Owen to vacate the belay between pitch 1 and 2 where they'd been sat for a similar amount of time waiting for two guys ahead of them to move on from the next belay! Whilst it was sunny the Zawn was in the shade for most of this time, so when I'd followed Chris up to the belay I suggested that we pack in any aspirations of doing Dream as it was going to take too long. Chris agreed so we dug the guide out. Brittomartis that Pete and his friend looked good, but they'd taken a very long time at the top and it involved quite a traverse (albeit along part of pitch 2 of Dream). Instead I opted to head up Dde, and HVS that followed a nice ramp up to a sentry box underneath the abseil line. Perhaps the most uncomfortable belay I'd managed to find all weekend as I was stood on a spike, but Chris adeptly followed me up. We swapped over on the belay and I led the last half of Dde to return us to our starting point where we pulled up the rope of the two guys who'd been in front of us all on Dream, and then ours as there was no way Ben and Owen were going to make any use of it.

We headed back to where the rucksacs were stowed and met Julie and we waited for Ben and Owen to finish off the last pitch of Dream of White Horses before heading back to the cars in the setting sun. Ben, Andrea, Owen & Julie all headed off to grab a bite to eat on the way home, but I'd arranged for Chris and I to swing by Llandudno to visit my grandmother who had also said she'd cook for us. After being fed and fixing the video player we set off on the road back, taking a short detour as part of the A55 was closed for roadworks, eventually arriving back in Sheffield around 23.00.

All in all an amazingly good weekend. I was a little disapointed not to have got Dream of White Horses done, but it just gives me something to head back for, although I'd be heading back anyway as it was such good fun. I think the main reason I enjoyed it so much was that I actually felt quite comfortable climbing on the sea-cliffs for the first time. If you're not worrying about why you're hanging from a rock above the sea then you can focus more on the climbing and enjoying it.

My phone (Nokia N95) has built in GPS, and I recently discovered the excellent (and free) Sports Tracker application from Nokia. Jim and I had decided to go for a walk as the weather looked crap for Saturday so I decided to try out the GPS and Sports Tracker. Everything was going fine it picked up the GPS satellites and was recording our progress no problem. Unfortunately the battery died after four hours and we still had another hour and a quarter of walking after that!

Still not to worry, the application recovered the data and I then exported it to Google Earth's kml format. Using a handy plugin:googlemaps for Dokuwiki I can embed Google Maps into my blog and have the data on the location of the walk overlaid as shown below (currently I'm having a few problems getting the map to focus on the locations when first loaded!).

So how did I achieve this wonderful trick of recording and then mapping my walk? There are a few pre-requisites and a little bit of knowledge required. You'll have to get the pre-requisites yourself, but I'm going to share with you my knowledge of how I did this.

1. Do you have the right hardware? : You will need a Nokia phone that has the ability to use GPS. I have a Nokia N95 and this works for me. Check the Sports Tracker web-page for details of the supported hardware and operating systems.
2. Install Nokia Sports Tracker : Start by installing the Sports Tracker. The latest version can be downloaded here.
3. Use Nokia Sports Tracker : Use the Nokia Sports Tracker to record a run/walk/cycle/etc. Ensure you have made a GPS connection and the data is being recorded. This may take a few minutes and is best achieved outdoors whilst stationary in my experience (i.e. not in a car). I found the battery lasted about four hours on a full charge over the previous night with no calls made or received and occasional checking of the tracker statistics.
4. Export your activities : Once you've completed your activity export your data as a Google Earth export. Note the location that you are saving it to (I save to my memory card and then copy the file to my computer).
5. Use the data in dokuwiki : I use dokuwiki and it has a very handy googlemaps plugin that makes utilising the Google Maps API exceptionally easy. Install and configure the plugin as described here. Upload your kml file to a location on your server (or on-line) and have your plugin:googlemaps point to the kml file.
6. Use the data in a web-page : Alternatively if you're not using doku then you can still use the kml file in your web-page but will have to edit your javascript to point to the kml file yourself.

The day after getting back from Eire I headed down to Cornwall with Ben, Andrea and Flash to meet up with Owen and Julie for a weekend of climbing on Cornish Granite. We arrived late around 02.00 on the Friday morning, pitched my tent with Bens help then went to bed.

The next day was gorgeous and we headed off to Bosigran. First route of the day was Doorpost (three-star HS 4a, 4b, 4a 56m). I managed to go too far on the first pitch, but sorted that out and Ben had a safe belay from above on the second pitch. Julie finished up the superb third pitch. We then tackled Zig-Zag (three-star VS -, 4c, 4c 46m) which was great fun.

After a lovely vegetable chilli in wraps we had a few pints in the Queens Arms in Bottallack. I snapped a picture of the stars before going to bed and managed to loose my remote (I found out several days later).

Saturday we headed to Chair Ladder, known by locals as Fisherman's Land End. A bit of scrambling and we found the abseil descent by the Pinnacle and Ben and I set about getting up Diocese (three-star VS 4c, 5a, 4a, 4b 61m). The cracks on the first pitch were a bit perplexing to start with, but were eventually overcome without any slips or falls to reach a very comfortable belay ledge in the cave. Ben followed and got to lead the exquisite second pitch.

I strung the second two pitches together to speed things up, and then we headed down to do the route Owen and Julie had lead first Terrier's Tooth (three-star HS 4b,-,- 39m) on the Pinnacle. Ben strung the first two pitches together, the first of which was rather bold and I got the top pitch. Owen and Julie had tackled Diocese and provided the ideal opportunity for some pictures as they topped out. An absolutely brilliant day with perfect weather, couldn't have asked for more at the start of November!

We stopped off fro cream-teas on the way home before heading to the Queens Arms for an absolutely gorgeous dinner.

The final day was a lot colder thanks to the wind, but we headed to Sennen Cove where we said goodbye to Owen and Julie who had to get off home. Ben and I climbed the ultra-classic Demo Route (three-star HS 4b, 4b 24m) with me getting the first pitch. I then led Double Overhang (one-star VS 4c) before we decided it was too cold and we sacked it off in favour of a cup-a-soup lunch and a walk around the tin mines outside Bottallack

On the way home the next day we stopped off for a walk on Dartmoor and trudged up to Yes Tor via High Willhays (the highest point on Dartmoor at 621m}}

After knackering ourselves climbing at Glendalough Saturday was a recovery day. Both Gary and I had very sore legs and were hobbling around all day. Thankfully Andrew, (Gary's brother-in-law) drove us into Portarlington and we had a couple of pints in the Anvil with him and his friends before heading along to the Pint O'Port. Unfortunately the back-room was closed, so no pool for us. Instead we followed Andrew and his friends to The Railway Inn which had a pool table and a jukebox with some fairly decent tunes on. The afternoon flowed as well as the pints did, I won most of the games of pool I played, loosing only one or two to Gary and beating some strangers who fancied trying their luck.

Gary and I then headed home and knocked up a Thai-style curry for dinner before getting stuck into some beers and relaxing in front of the TV as we were both still knackered from Fridays exertions.

The skies had cleared so in the afternoon Gary and I went for a walk in the Slieve Bloom Mountains to a waterfall on the river Barrow. Plenty of photo opporunities were taken advantage of.

We decided to head to Kilkenny and Lisa joined us as it was a bank holiday in Eire. It was rather cold, and I had stupidly forgotten to charge my camera battery the previous night so was very cautious about firing off lots of pictures, but got some good ones out of those that I did shoot. We went in the newer cathedral and I wish we'd gone into the older 13th Century one, still it leaves something for next time.

Fingers crossed and we jumped in the car to head to Dalkey Quarry, south of Dublin. Hewen out of the grainte hills that form the northern end of the Wicklow mountains the granite was used to build the port defences around Dublin. Access was a lot easier than Glendalough as you can park up and walk to the crag in under 5 minutes! It was a bit cold but with plenty of layers on we were fine. I set off leading Levitation (one-star HS 4b 14m), Gary then led Fragile (HS 4b 17m). I fancied the look of Died Intestate (HVS 5b 12m) a slab route squeezed in between Levitation and Mahjong. There was an okay number couple of nuts low down and then some thin moves between well-spaced holds to move up the slab and get an okay(ish) number 2 nut in a shallow crack. Fortunately the climbing easied considerably and upwards progess was continuous. Gary then led the crack line Mahjong (two-star VS 4c 12m) to the left, managing to unclip all of his nuts from his rack as he went. Fortunately he didn't drop them all! We then went across to the other side of the quarry and I led the excellent and varied Jameson 10 (three-star VS 4b 12m). Finally we headed round into the other bay to catch the last few rays of sun and I led the excellent Street Fighter (two-star VS 4c) and then followed Gary up Holy Moac (HS 4b 6m) which was fairly easy as he'd not put any gear in.

After finishing up we headed into Dublin as Gary had an evening class for his accountancy course. We had time to kill for dinner and found a secluded cellar bar that was doing hand-made burgers and chips for €8! Infinitely better qaulity that the crap you get at fast-food places and excellent value for money. A quick pint and Gary went to his course and I headed off round Dublin with my camera (now fully charged) to take some pictures. Cautious at first of someone nicking my camera I didn't get the tripod out, but quickly found that this was drastically limiting the pictures I could take so carefully set it up and used the remote to snap some pictures, that all-in-all came out quite well I think.

Well as expected I've slipped on the blogging front, but thats mainly because I've been away on holiday. I headed over to Eire on the evening of Thursday 23rd October. The flight was delayed by a good hour or so and I couldn't even drink in the bar as I was picking up a hire car at the other end. As a consequence of the flight being late I incurred €22 late fee from the car-hire company, despite it being completely beyond my control! Nothing I could do though, so I set off to Portarlington with Gary's directions on my phone. An uneventful hour later and I arrived at Lisa's Mums where she and Gary are currently living.

A few ales were had and Gary and I discussed our plan for the next day as the weather look good for Friday before deteriorating over the weekend. We'd been planning to head to Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains and I'd been recommended a route called Sarcophagus (3-star HVS 4c, 5a, 5a, 5a) by Ricky Bell and his friend at the world premier of On-Sight earlier in the week.

Waking with fuzzy heads to a clear blue sky the next day we jumped in the car and headed East towards Wicklow. Parked in the car-park by the upper lake (to minimise the walk) and headed up the valley.

Round the corner we saw our target for the day, Twin Buttress with a waterfall splitting it into the East and the West flank.

As we scrambled up to the crag we heard and then saw some wild deer further up the hillside.

After scrambling up to the crag through the boulder field we geared up and opted for Quartz Gully (3-star HS 3c, 4a, 3c 54m) on the west flank of the West Buttress. Gary led the first pitch fine I followed up and led through the second pitch, bringing Gary up who led through for the final pitch to the top. I hate abseiling so we opted to walk round and down, which was quite a slippy slide down grass and mud banks and streams. Quick drink and then we decided to tackle Sarcophagus (3-star HVS 4c, 5a, 5a, 5a 84m). Gary wasn't keen to lead so I set off stringing the first two pitches into one. A few hard pulls up a steepish corner crack near the top of the second pitch and arrived at a rather spacious ledge with some fresh tat and plenty of natural belay options. I anchored myself and sat down on the front of the buttress with a clear view to watch Gary following up.

Gary came up and whilst belaying him I noticed a few drops of water in the air. I wasn't sure if it was genuine rain or spary from the waterfall. Gary and I decided that despite the grey cloud coming over the other side of the valley it was spary from the waterfall, so we decided to carry on. The next pitch looked tricky, following a corner crack bounded on the left by a slightly overhanging wall and a steep slab on the right. Moving up I found that the crack narrowed and after placing some gear had some difficulty actually getting my fingers into the crack. Making the most of the shallow locks I could get I teetered up slowly moving my feet up high enough until I could reach better holds higher up the crack where it widened again. Moving higher the foot holds on the slab to the right seemed to disappear and the left wall pushes you rightwards as its overhanging. I got up to some good blocks but couldn't see anywhere to place gear immediately. Hung around for a bit trying to suss out somewhere stable and not strenuous to stand and place gear but ended up getting pumped. Decided quickly to reverse a few moves, still a meter or so above my gear I had to drop onto it as I was knackered. Gary (and the gear) thankfully held the fall fine. A good couple of minutes were spent shaking out and looking up at the route. I'd managed to completely miss the obvious spike which ”Tradition dictates a sling on the spike at two-thirds height, a salute to the first ascent.”. How could I have been so stupid, I'd even read the description of the pitch before setting off! Up I went back to my previous high point only this time I used the spike, both to hang from and to sling it for protection. This was far less strenuous and the moves up weren't as challenging when my arms weren't pumped. The arete near the top of the crack was gained and I moved round to a wide crack that was a bit damp with awkward holds. A cam was carefully placed and I pulled through on to the slab for a well-earned rest, padding up the slab to the corner and moving out left before gaining the top of the platform.

Gary really didn't enjoy seconding the pitch and was knackered by the time he reached the ledge so we skipped round the corner and scarmbled down to the bags and hot-tailed it back to the car-park in the fading light before we got locked in.

The weekend arrived (again as it has a habit of doing). Tim picked me up early and we headed out to Curbar to meet up with some of his friends who were visiting. After walking up to L'Horla area, we heard a chirruping coming from the rock, the only thing it could be was a bat, and after careful scrutiny we found the little critter wedged into the starting crack of Usurper! Tim opted to warm up on Bel Amie (VS 4b) which was an excellent choice as it was one of the few climbs that was still in the shade and therefore cold and damp! Just as he was setting off his friends Max and Will turned up after having stopped in Hathersage for breakfast on the drive up from Bristol that morning. Didn't feel to great seconding Bel Amie which didn't bode well for the rest of the day.

Max seemed to have boundless enthusiasm for life and climbing and quickly jumped on Insanity (E2 5c) to get warmed up! Up he went placing gear, but he quickly got pumped and came down for a rest. Second attempt and he got a bit higher, but still got pumped, and dropped onto the gear this time (which held). A tactial switch to climb L'Horla followed, and Tim's friend Megan from North Wales arrived with a couple of her friends too.

Having not felt great on Bel Amie I opted to lead the relatively easy October Crack (HS 4b) which was a little tougher than the grade suggested (as are many of the climbs at Curbar). Dan turned up in time to second this after Tim had followed me up. Tim then led The Toy (E1 5c) which was pretty damn stiff to say the least, and before we had finished this Ben turned up.

Owen and Julie arrived and we opted to head further along the crag, so we headed to the tourist path on the top. Found a few Liberty Caps on the way and Dan and I decided to lead Two Pitch Route (VS 4c, 5a) first put up by Joe Brown. We we're both somewhat indifferent to who took which pitch so we drew straws. I got the first pitch which had a tough seciton past two wide cracks and then a delightful traverse round the buttress to the base of the second pitch. Dan had a damn good attempt at the second jamming pitch and just about reached the easy holds but was suffering from cold hands (compounded by being at the windiest part of the crag), so I got to finish off the second pitch too which was delightful jamming finishing on big jugs. Your feet just stick in the crack and it feels very secure.

Meanwhile Owen, Julie, Ben and Tim climbed The Brain (VS 4c) whilst Max and Will did some E4 6a round the corner which Tim went up too.

Tim then asked me to belay him on Soyuz (E2 5c), which was also catching a lot of wind. He set off up the crack finding holds to the left which prevented barn-dooring. Placed a couple of bits of gear in the crack and moved up, then all of a sudden he was off! There was a little slack in as he'd climbed past his gear and I didn't want the rope so tight that it pulled him back. I instantly locked the rope off when he slipped, but the slack, stretch and weight difference between us (which lifted me off the ground by about a metre) resulted in a very close call. Tim said he wasn't hurt and after recomposing himself got back on. A cam was placed right at the top of the crack to avoid another close call, and he tenatively moved up to the horizontal breaks where he found, much to his relief, that bomber gear could be placed (two cams). A delicate and quite technical traverse right avoid the ridiculously long-reach to the top and Tim was safely on the top. My turn to second, and I had a real tussle getting the nut that Tim had fallen on, I had to have a rock passed up to use as a hammer on the nut-key, but it came out and I carried on up. Almost made it through without slipping but fluffed the reach at the top as I hadn't traversed quite far enough right. A damn fine lead from Tim, especially after almost decking out!

I felt quite bad at almost letting my friend hit the deck. I asked him again if he was fine and he assured me there were no scratches, bangs, cuts, grazes or bruises. Upon reflection I don't think I was doing anything wrong, yes I'd paid out slack but that was needed as he'd moved above his gear. Was there too much slack? Possibly, but there certainly wasn't excess slack, the ropes in front of me we're leading straight up to Tim, (i.e. there was no slack rope in front of me) so I think that had I kept the ropes any tighter I'd have been pulling him back (not something a leader enjoys). Perhaps the one thing that I should probably have done was anchor myself to the ground which would have avoided being lifted up if/when Tim fell. The most important thing though is that he wasn't hurt, and hopefully he still trusts me to belay for him.

I headed home then catching a lift with Ben, leaving Tim, Will and Max to go on a little soloing mission on the easier climbs on the edge.

All-in-all an excellent day, despite not feeling great at the outset (probably a consequence of drinking too much on Friday night, again!).

Its clear I'm never going to be very good at writing a blog, as I'm writing today about what I got upto last weekend.

Saturday was spent gardening, mainly cutting the grass, and then weeding the strawberry patch which is grossly over-grown with grass. Boring but its tidy, I've extracted and planted about twenty small trailers, and the strwaberry bed has been fertilised with compost from the garden.

Sunday the weather was good and I went out climbing to Stanage with Tom and Ben. Headed to Mississippi Buttress first and warmed up on Mississippi Buttress Direct (VS 4c). Tom then led Amazon Crack (S) and I took the opportunity to snap some pictures of someone else leading Mississippi Buttress Direct.

Ben then jumped on The Scoop (HVS 5b) which was a stunning route, very rounded in the upper section, but fairly good gear throughout.

I then fluffed my way up some Severe wall, before Tom was sand-bagged by my old guide (Stanage 1989) into trying Little Tower, HS in my guide, but VS 4b in others. He backed off so I took up the challenge and found it to be a very pleasent route (if a little short) involving one long reach off of poorish holds. Moved along to Verandah Buttress where Tom led Verandah Pillar (HS 4b) before Ben jumped on Verandah Wall a touch VS 4c. I snapped a good 100 pictures of him leading this (there was a bit of dithering in the middle), but decided to try out a triptych to show some of the moves in the crux.

Finished the day off by leading one of the strangest routes I've ever done on grit, Cleft Wing (VS 5b) which involves a slab, 180° about turn, a fall across a gap and some big jugs. It put a big grin on my face and if you're ever in the area you should seek it out and try it.

I've a Nokia N95 and wanted to put some videos onto it to keep me entertained on journeys. A bit of searching led to a few different posts, and I opted to combine the short script with a method that uses mencoder (that comes bundled with Mplayer to check how to scale the video correctly and then uses and then ffmpeg to resize/encode . The following script is simple, easy-to-use and works and was found here (note though that the original was slightly dated as the new codec is called libfaac).

#!/bin/sh
# Re-encode existing media files, suitable for viewing on a N95 (or
#  similar S60 device)
# Uses ffmpeg to do the re-encoding to MP4, and mplayer to query the
#  resolution, so we can figure out how to scale it to 320x???
# Details on how the bitrates were selected can be found at
#  http://gagravarr.livejournal.com/129314.html
#
# v0.03 - 2008/12/26
#
 
RATE=350000
ARATE=96000
 
IN=$1
OUT=$2
 
if [[ "$OUT" == "" ]]; then
	echo "Use:"
	echo "  $0 <in> <out.mp4> [size] [framerate]"
	echo ""
	echo "Where the size should be something like 320x180"
	echo " (if not given, will scale to fit 320 pixels wide)"
	echo "And the framerate should be something like 23.98"
	echo " (if not given, ffmpeg will try to use the current one)"
	echo ""
	exit 1
fi
 
SIZE=$3
if [[ "$SIZE" == "" ]]; then	
	# Query it, via mplayer
	echo "Detecting the size of $IN..."
	RAWSIZE=`mplayer -ao none -vo none "$IN" 2>&1 | grep 'VIDEO' | awk '{print $3}'`
	echo "Detected a size of $RAWSIZE"
 
	# Scale to 320x???
	RAW_W=`echo $RAWSIZE | awk -F 'x' '{print $1}'`
	RAW_H=`echo $RAWSIZE | awk -F 'x' '{print $2}'`
 
	# Scale it to a multiple of 2, rounding up if needed
	SIZE_W=320
	SIZE_H=`perl -e "print int((${RAW_H} / ${RAW_W} * ${SIZE_W}) + 0.5)"`
	SIZE_H=`perl -e "print int( int(${SIZE_H}/2) * 2 )"`
 
	SIZE=${SIZE_W}x${SIZE_H}
	echo "Picked a scaled size of $SIZE"
else
	echo "Using specified size of $SIZE"
fi
 
FRATE=$4
if [[ "$FRATE" == "" ]]; then
	# Do nothing
	FOO=1
else
	FRATE="-r $FRATE"
	echo "Using specified framerate of $FRATE"
fi
 
echo "Video bitrate will be $RATE"
echo "Audio bitrate will be $ARATE"
echo ""
sleep 4
 
# Off we go!
ffmpeg -i "$IN" \
	-f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -b $RATE -s $SIZE \
	-acodec libfaac -ar 48000 -ab $ARATE -ac 2 \
	$FRATE   $OUT

Simply copy and paste the above code into a text-file called n95enc. Save it to a location thats in your $PATH and make it executable (chmod 0755 /path/to/n95enc) and thats it. Obviously you need to have Mplayer and ffmpeg installed so that the script works, but thats simple (under Gentoo emerge -av mplayer ffmpeg).