Browsing Posts published in May, 2008
- Mom’s poor computer died. Working on her backup system. #
- Mom’s backup computer is good. My brain is fried. Too many late nights and now I am off to bed. #
- Morning everyone. A good rest and now I need to get ready for work! #
- So now I know what is causing the page error when trying to submit comments on http://www.thesleepygeek.com. The theme! NEED Chris’ social media :( #
- @dsilverman ouch… I did that 2 years ago. I am so paranoid they had to use the funny juice on me. Knocked me right out. #
- @UstreamTV I think it would be more bandwidth for better quality and less stutters in the video. #
—–BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK—–
Version: 3.1
GIT d- s:+ a C++++ UL+ P L++ W++ N+ K-
w+ M+ V– Y+ PGP t++@ X- tv+ b– DI+++
D+ G++ h++ r+++ z++++
——END GEEK CODE BLOCK——
I came across this page (http://www.geekcode.com/geek.html) while reading through my regular sites and thought it was worth a mention. I am all for this kind of thing. I have a printed out Initech TPS Report cover sheet hanging on my cubicle wall along with another sheet reading “There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary, and those who don’t”.
It’s nice to know there are other people in the world with the same interests and can talk the same language. After all we are a ‘special’ bunch. I try to keep my posts clean of too much geekness but let’s be honest… There are times when my wife, with the best intentions will ask a detailed question about why my day was good or bad and then I get to watch her eyes glaze over while I tell her. :) Kudos to her!
To get your geek code you need to read through the page and manually write it out. Only a true geek would take the 5 minutes :)
Now that I have the comments working (the problem was caused by the theme I was using) I now have installed a really cool little plugin. It allows you to login to the site with an OpenID to post a comment. Many of us have an OpenID thought a service that we already are a member of. Most notably are Yahoo, AOL and Flicker however there are many more on the list.
I encourage you to register locally on the site if you wish. That feature is working and even preferred so that I have a more complete profile of you. That’s nice when looking at comment posts.
If you decide to use the OpenID approach, please have a look at your profile before posting. Some OpenId providers such as Yahoo will give you a name about 3 characters long full of gibberish. It doesn’t look nice and I can’t credit you with comments if I need to.
Now the next step in this process is to get the theme fixed. I am really torn because I love the theme I was using but don’t really want to invest much time in repairing it. I plan to use Chris’ social media theme that he is working on for his site. At this time he has said that he plans to make it free for everyone’s use.
- Time to get back to the grind. Had to re-install Windows on the machine with the failed HD. How to finish a client’s computer… #
- Time to head off to bed. My repair is finally done. My Outlook restore was not so successfu :( #
- This business about errors on the page is killing me. IE is really not my friend today. HELP! Check http://www.thesleepygeek.com and tell me :) #
- Now have twhirl up and running. I like the interface. With spaces I have a desktop set aside for IM and tweets. Maybe put IRC there too. #
- No one is safe from a head bouncing off a platter like a rock to your windshield at 80! Crap, now I need to reinstall. Ubuntu here come ;) #
- Good morning everyone. Getting ready for work. The sun is out and it looks beautiful out there! #
- Acrobat/Word integration… who knew that it would stop you from opening a Word file from a network share. #
- Lunch is almost here. My ankle is killing mt for some reason. Going to take an Advil! #
- WOW! Got iMovie to iDVD to look great. I am soooo going to write it up. Look at your updater. #
- Uh oh! My wife just noticed that comments are not working on the site. When you aren’t reg’d it give your a page cannot be displayed error. #
- Uh oh! My wife just noticed that comments not working. You get a page cannot be display error if you are not registered. #
- Time to head home. Going to go go the driving range with my wife later. #
The first few times that I attempted to create a DVD of some of my home recordings I always ended up with a final product that was about 15 fps. I had to start digging around as to the cause of the dropped frames. What was strange was that when viewing the captured video and also the edited video before I would import it into iDVD, it looked fantastic.
I did some looking around and it seems that the poor end result is actually caused by the export format of iMovie. I was new to using it so I chose to export the video through the share options so that it was integrated in the iDVD media chooser. That I believe saves it in .M4V format and the forum post that I found suggested to export the movie in .DV format. To do this you need to choose to export via Quicktime. In the save window you have all the options you need to change the export format, one of them being .DV.
This is a good way to do it because you captured in .DV format to your iMovie, you are not losing anything during export. So now iDVD has almost a raw format because .DV doesn’t have any compression.
It seems to take longer to compile the final version of the disc through iDVD but the iMovie export is definitely faster. I chose to perform the iDVD burn overnight and in the morning it was ready.
Apple has just officially released OSX 10.5.3. If you open up the software updater you will now see it listed there. It looks to be about a 420 MB download, so rev up your high speed connections :)
Among the updates are some changes to Time Machine, Spaces, Parental Controls, Mail, iCal, iChat, Airport, Automator and Address Book. For a complete list of updates you can check Apple’s site here, or here for security updates.
Let’s get installing folks. I am curious to see what people think of the update and if you see any issues.
- @leolaporte That 160GB drive could go to charity. I am in need :) Just kidding, ever thought of recycling old equipment? #
- Cleaning the office… trying to make my blog entry about a messy office a total LIE! This is sucking. I need to build a test/repair bench. #
- Morning everyone. At work starting my day. Thinking about a plan for a workbench in the office at home. #
- I am going to attempt a shot at DV camera to iMovie again. Well more the iMovie to iDVD with no drop in frames. I am starting over. #
- Left overs for lunch. They were good! #
- @chrispirillo Good luck, hope they are doing better. Our thoughts are with you and your parents. #
I was poking around and noticed on twitter a mention from ponzarelli about a new IM client called Digsby. I am always looking for something since the promises of Trillian kept falling short. I don’t even know if they have released Trillian Astra which would be the predecessor to v2.x.
So I downloaded Digsby, fairly small download and very easy installation. The setup wizard is very easy. If first will prompt you to choose a username for their service and then ask for a couple of personal details. Once done, then it’s as simple as adding all your IM accounts to the interface. This process is also very easy through their main account window.
What is amazing about this IM client is that it is so much more than simple IM. It is a client for e-mail, twitter, facebook, myspace and a number of other things. It allows you to link to more than just your IM accounts in a sort of ‘social utility’. I think I need to coin the phrase *wink – wink*. We have so many social links and they are in varying forms that a utility like this is going to be critical.
I really like the user interface once you are in the program. It is clean and user friendly. The lists can be organized as most other IM programs allow and you are able to use most of their features.
I suggest that you head over to the website and take a look at their product. Unfortunately there is only a Windows version, but they have plans to release for Mac and Linux. They seem to have started something that I think will take off with other programs. We will see integration a lot more in the future. People are starting to need to bundle all their external connections together because they are becoming too many and thus segmented.
