Tag: videos

This morning while I was booted into windows and checking on the weather; I noticed that there was a high chance of thunderstorms. Having had enough trouble of late with my computer, I decided to shut it down while I was at work1. When I got home from work this evening, I let it try booting into Linux again as I wanted to grab the exact errors I’ve been getting so I could do some googling for a solution. Much to my surprise, it booted straight into Linux without a problem. Then I ran YOU and had it reload the latest kernel from SuSE and this time when I rebooted to complete the install; it came up perfectly. *schweet*

Of course, staying home to fix my computer means I missed another Mindbridge meeting but I doubt they’ll really miss me there as usually I just sit there silently. Hopefully next month, I’ll be able to make it to a meeting again And come to think of it, I probably won’t make it to next month’s meeting as that’s awful close to my wedding day. *shrug* You win some, you lose some.

1 Usually, it’s up & running either grabbing new, fansubbed anime via BitTorrent or transcoding video files for burning to disc.

The Doctor

Earlier this week the first episode of the new Doctor Who series, by the BBC, was leaked onto the internet. I was able to obtain a copy and give it a quick whirl1. I have to say that I’ve not enjoyed watched the Doctor so much since Tom Baker played him and while I still miss that massive scarf; the new Doctor’s look suits very well. At least from what one can tell in a ~40 minute episode, Mr. Eccleston seems to have captured that playfully annoying essence which is so esstenial to portraying the Doctor properly. I look forward to seeing more of this new season and hope that it will be quickly released to DVD (to make it easier to get here in the States).

1 Actually, it wasn’t all that quick as I was trying to figure a way to make the AVI file into a SVCD. I came really close with Tovid but the quality wasn’t all that great to begin with and the video was totally corrupted towards the end. Still, I did get a lot closer with Tovid’s CLI tools than with Tovid GUI, so maybe with some more work I can figure this out. That’d be great as I’d really like to burn some quick&dirty SVCDs using CD-RWs to watch various downloads on my real TV rather than my PC. What can I say, the futon is way more comfortable than my desk chair.

*Grumpf* is my word for when I’m feeling just a slightly bit grouchy. Not enough to make me want to rip people’s heads off, but enough that I’m less than enthusiastic about Life, the Universe and Everything. Of course, feeling *grumpf* today is mostly my own fault. I’ve been staying up far too late: reading, playing on the computer and what not. But it’s also work’s fault; what with the recent changes and all.1 Then for an extra kick in the chops, I finished the book I was reading and went to grab the next one in the series for something to read over my lunch hour.2 Naturally, I can find books 3, 4 & 5 but not book 2. *grumpf*

Still, today’s not been all bad. While searching for book 2; I did run across some Discworld books that I’d forgotten I had and those will give me something to read for the next couple of days. Maybe even enough to get me through to the weekend, when I might rip the house apart to find book 2. *shrug* I hate having to stop reading in the middle of the series. Particularly, when I know I have the next book. But I’m trying to focus on the good things about today here; so that’s enough of that. Umm, tonight was the monthly Mindbridge meeting. It appears now that I have officially taken over their webmaster duties. Spif. Now I just need to finalize our plans regarding the hosting and what I’ll be basing their site on. As mentioned in previous postings, their current site is a nightmare of M$ FrontPage generated vomit and since I’m a lazy git; I want to implement a CMS. Of course, I also need to know what all they want out of the site and if they want to merge their Yahoo! group into the real site or to keep that seperate. It’ll be a lot of work, but I’m oddly looking forward to it, even –and this is the kicker– in my *grumpf* mood. Anyway, that’s enough for tonight; so good night inkernet  vast repository of porn  all you people out there in TV land. Ah screw it, stop reading this drivel and go get yourself some sleep.

1 I’m not really going to get into it further here; as I need to keep my job. So let is suffice to say some people have left the company recently due to changes that are a result in the company having been bought out. I respect their decision and somewhat wish I could take the moral high ground with them. However, I’m in a 2 person household with a 1 person income and plenty of bills; so that’s not really an option for me. *grumpf*
2 Sometimes I surf the internet. Other times I play video games. Occassionally I’ll watch some anime, but lately I’ve been really enjoying kicking up my feet and reading in peace & quiet. *sigh*

Bah, I’m still a bit torked off about yesterday. At work1, there’s been a person who keeps sending up emails with the wrong code in the subject line. We use these codes to route the issues to the correct person and putting the wrong code on the email can mean a delay of at least a week before the issue gets looked at. Well, this same idjit2 sent an email asking for an update on one of those issues. Since I was running a process at the time; I looked over the issue, found it was mislableled, forwarded it over to the correct person and then spent probably 2 hours writing up a diplomatic response explaining the difference between two of the codes we use.
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While I don’t own any computers from Apple (unless you want to count my iPod); I have friends that do and so I tend to follow any news about them. Today at MacWorld Expo 2005, Steve Jobs announced many things but in particular he announced 2 products that sound very interesting in deed. I’m speaking of the iPod shuffle and the Mac mini. The first interests me as my iPod is an older model with less battery life than I’m happy about (plus, I think it would make a cool birthday gift for the fiance). The second is interesting for a number of reasons:

  • It’s a Mac and it’s affordable.
  • If it’s really as quiet as they’re saying; it could make a great computer to put next to the TV, for watching video files off my server1.
  • It’s smaller than the phone on my desk at work!
  • Did I mention it’s affordable?

Of course, these products have only just been announced and aren’t available just yet. Not that I’ve got the money to buy either one right now. *sigh*

1 For the record, those video files are episodes of fan-subbed anime that haven’t been licensed in the US yet.