A new venture of mine is pronunciation videos on youtube. I have started uploading a few and would rather the word as the thumbnail instead of my face.

This is possible, youtube take 3 snapshots and you get to choose one of these, for more choice I think you may have to sign up for a paid service.

To do this, in ‘My Account’ go to ‘Videos’, select the video you wish by clicking on edit, then scroll down to ‘Video Snapshot’ section where you have 3 options. Once the changed are saved it may take up to 36 hours to go live so don’t expect instant results.

I have dabbled in the old Windows Movie Maker 2.6 and recently installed the new Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. Unfortunately it didnt meet expectations, they have simplified it making it easier for the general user but in doing so removed the timeline making it a glorified slideshow maker.

I played around with the new one and it just does’t cut it. There is good news though, you can still get and use the old version which I can verify works on Windows 7.

Get it here Windows Movie Maker 2.6

I’ve now been a a few countries that block certain web sites such as youtube, twitter, facebook and the BBC. I was wondering how to access blocked sites in Ubuntu.

There are many ways around this, I first tried web proxies but found these to be slow and insecure. Some windows based applications exist as proxies but using Linux were no good to me.

I got around this by using a program called Ultrasurf via Wine in Linux Ubuntu. Here is how I did it:

1. Install Wine if you haven’t, either by Synaptic Package Manager, or command line – sudo apt-get install wine
2. You need two DLLs (dynamic link library) files, get them here. Extract and copy mfc42.dll and msvco60.dll into both folders (I access from Main Menu>Wine>Browse C:/ drive):
   • wine/drive_c/windows/system
   • wine/drive_c/windows/system32
3. Download Ultrasurf, extract the execute file into the base wine directory; wine/drive_c
4. Right click on Ultrasurf (mines called u1006.exe) and select ‘Open with Wine Windows Program Launcher’
5. In Ultrasurf goto Option> Proxy settings and select Auto Detect Proxy. Also tick ‘do not use IE’ in Options.
6. Now goto Main Menu> Settings> Preferences> Network Proxy. Create a new location, I call mine ‘Blocked’, in this location select Manual Proxy and tick use same protocol for all. In HTTP Proxy put localhost and port 9666.
7. I use Firefox for my normal browsing and Chrome for my proxy browsing. In Chrome goto Preferences> Under the hood> Change Proxy Settings. Select the location you just created and now your browsing will be redirected via the Ultrasurf proxy.
8. Whenever Ultrasurf is running there should be a small padlock in the bottom right corner.
9. Happy Surfing

Update: If you download the Ultrasurf addon for Firefox, install the api, it will create an icon or text on you status bar. Click this and it will automatically change your proxy settings, click it again to go back to normal. This is the best way I have found accessing blocked sites in Ubuntu.