Qube and O2

Posted by Thomas Mon, 27 Feb 2006 00:14:52 +0000

I want one of these and one of these. Very badly. Oh, and while you’re buying, I’d like one of these as well.

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Sets

Posted by Thomas Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:32:13 +0000

Had sets trouble lately? Need help with your sets? Call me for all your sets tutoring needs. 112.358.1321

Posted in General | 5 Comments

Cordless Drill

Posted by Thomas Sat, 18 Feb 2006 19:48:26 +0000

Which would be better, DeWalt or Makita for a cordless drill? As I recall, the Makita circular saw at Wesley was the only one that stood up to the abuse we put it through. But, we didn’t have any cordless drills. I’ve had some dealings with DeWalt cordless drills, and they’ll get the job done, but I don’t know how they fare in the long run. Oh, and for the tool lovers out there, Amazon is having a tool sale for Presidents’ Day. Which works out great for me, because I’m in need of some tools.

Posted in General | 2 Comments

2/16/05 Photo Link Post

Posted by Thomas Fri, 17 Feb 2006 00:32:27 +0000

http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2006/02/people_having_s.html
http://groundglass.ca/archives/2006/02/17/00.00.00/
http://iveseenbetter.com/archives/000622.html
http://www.joesnyc.streetnine.com/archives/centre_street-february_16_2006_43.html
http://www.worksongs.com/archives/2006/02/toronto_power_c.php
http://www.bluejake.com/archives/2006/02/15/belvedere_castle_in_the_snow.php
http://www.digitalapoptosis.com/archives/miscellaneous/000794.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marko_k/98802018/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dreamtech/100036068/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dicristi/98259038/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/feuilllu/99598714/
i’d swear that this kid at five days old is already constipated

Posted in Photo Links | 1 Comment

2/14/05 Photo Link Post, et al.

Posted by Thomas Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:47:42 +0000

These are, for whatever reason rather artsy. More than I usually see from flickr. Most seem very surreal and/or dali and/or escher-ish to me.

http://static.flickr.com/42/97483116_fc7175c6a8_b.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/christichka/99003448/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chinaglia/98450138/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eqqman/98102794/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonpais/99224184/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgp314/98638983/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fugo/97095390/

I had to buy a new external enclosure, as a little IC broke off of the current one. Thank you very much. I realize that now I have two enclosures that I don’t trust. I should probably throw them away.

Posted in Photo Links | 1 Comment

T-shirts

Posted by Thomas Mon, 13 Feb 2006 23:58:56 +0000

Why do all of the cool t-shirts on the web cost like $17? Where are the $7 tees?

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Sunday

Posted by Thomas Mon, 13 Feb 2006 02:02:50 +0000

My first impression of looking at this picture was that it was mediocre at best. Go ahead and look at it now. I’ll wait.

Back now? Looking at it now later, I notice the girl in orange, which totally changes my opinion.

Anyway, not much going on here. Cold and stuff. My car could really use a tune up/tire brake rotation/checkup. I also need a haircut, but for whatever [stupid] reason I continue to push it off. I did laundry, which made me feel better than it should have. I also felt like I worked all weekend. And how is it that a person would have no qualms about marrying someone they hardly know? What sense does that make? What sense does this sentance make? None. It’s 2am and bedtime for bonzo.

Spam poetry for your enjoyment:

suddenly the sandwich taught miserable,
suddenly immediate wife mentioned out yours.

my side steps across love explain,
hard anybody fire wrong respect goes,
young is anybody you different?

bought here find.

bought out disappoint mischievous already,
somewhere drew evening again yours.

reply letters the commit find end.
how purpose being.

Posted in General | 2 Comments

Wednesday

Posted by Thomas Thu, 09 Feb 2006 00:03:43 +0000

Watched Dukes of Hazzard and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room over the weekend. I thought both of them were excellent. Why didn’t anyone tell me that Jay Chandrasekhar directed it? He had a cameo with Rabbit. Farva was in it, along with Kenny from Garden State, Jessica Simpson, and Willie smoking an apple as a bong. Good times.

Aquarius January 20 – February 18

The stars understand that faith is difficult in the modern world, but trust them when they tell you that the derivative of a constant is always zero.

This Dilbert is hilarious and all too true.
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2006020523365.jpg

Posted in General, Movies | 2 Comments

Photo Links for 2/5/05

Posted by Thomas Sun, 05 Feb 2006 19:50:16 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/loupiote/91959961/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/buzzby09/93504263/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/floyduk/94255561/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/themightyjimbo/93489485/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hobo_pd/93652752/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pochacco20/94496171/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/salli/93013028/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandrend/95459027/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/notcatherinezeta/94943445/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/schizoo23/95464358/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/leahcim/93603573/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/xdrei/94116827/

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DVD audio commentaries

Posted by Thomas Sat, 04 Feb 2006 21:54:45 +0000

I don’t know about you guys, but I love dvd commentaries. I’m not entirely sure why, but I do. And just about as much as I love audio commentaries, I love linux, transcoding, and my avel linkplayer2. Why you may ask? Because the synergy of those things allows me to be lazy and just watch movies without having to deal with the phyical dvds. BUT, it also means that the movies that I watch don’t have the commentaries on them. So, when I do own a great movie, such as Garden State, I figure, hey, I’m a reasonably bright individual, why don’t you re-encode the movie to include the audio commentaries? Well, that’s just what I did, and I’m going to tell you how I did it.

Rip & transcode w/ dvdrip. This gives you a project directory in ~/.dvdrip, the vob files, and a shiny, newly-ripped avi. For me this took about 2.5 hours and made my system virtually unusable. Load avg was over 10 for the duration. :( Time for new ram. 2GB anyone? :)

Rip the audio from the vobs like so (the vobs are in the directory vob/001/):

tccat -i "vob/001/" -t vob -d 0 -S 0 | tcdemux -a 2 -x ac3 -S 0 -M 2 \\
 -d 0 | tcextract -t vob -a 2 -x ac3 -d 0 > commentary-1.ac3
tccat -i "vob/001/" -t vob -d 0 -S 0 | tcdemux -a 3 -x ac3 -S 0 -M 2 \\
 -d 0 | tcextract -t vob -a 3 -x ac3 -d 0 > commentary-2.ac3

Garden State has 4 ac3 audio tracks: 0 is english, 1 is spanish, 2 is the first commentary, and 3 is the second commentary.

Add the commentaries to the original avi:

avimerge -o tmp.avi -i garden_state_xvid_dvdrip.avi -p commentary-1.ac3
avimerge -o garden_state_xvid_dvdrip_with_commentary.avi -i tmp.avi \\
 -p commentary-2.ac3

Voila! Now you have an even shinier and newer avi with 3 total audio tracks and 2 new audio commentaries. Looks like each new audio track cost us roughly 141MB! in additional storage space, but, hey, it’s worth it.

Tune in next time for another installment of Thomas’s Cool and Overly Complex Technology, we’ll discuss the possible advantages of the new h264 codec to improve quality while decreasing filesize.

References:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_DVD-Ripping
http://dominia.org/djao/dvdsub.html
http://www.transcoding.org/cgi-bin/transcode?Command_Examples/Multi-Audio_AVI-Files
http://www.transcoding.org/cgi-bin/transcode?Command_Examples/Pass-Through_Modes
http://www.bunkus.org/dvdripping4linux/single/index.html#tricks_extraaudio

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Posted in Movies, Technology | 2 Comments

More Cheese

Posted by Thomas Wed, 01 Feb 2006 23:17:45 +0000

I need more cheese. I think I’m on my last two slices, which I am about to eat for supper. And I just was at Kroger like two days ago, but I didn’t realize… :( Yes, yes, I know. I have a rough life.

I just bough sheets on Amazon, from Macys. Quite odd.

Time to eat and finish Episode IV.

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