Day

I road with Natalie to the dealership. We had the Corolla serviced for $350 or so. Nat had to get to work so we went straight there. Nat wanted me to wait around for her to get off because she was only supposed to be there for an hour for training. Right. I know how these things work. It is going to take as long as it takes. I don't want to wait around and get hungry. So, I took the bus.

I got to the bus stop, after having to walk through leaking sewer water to cross the street, at 13:02. I walked in the door to our house at 14:12. Not bad. I don't like walking because it gives me time to think. I don't like what I thought about today. I get angry and fidgety. I used to walk to calm down. It doesn't work any more. Nothing works any more.

Tomorrow is the Super Bowl. I have a high quality TV and have no intention to watch any of it. I just don't care. I'm not hanging out with friends. I'm not betting on the game. I'm not even upset that it will take the place of TV shows that I might want to watch, because I do not watch TV any more. Between Nat dominating the TV and the shit for content, there is just no reason.

Good with a sling shot

Eat your heart out Bart. This guy got you beat. I'd call him the best I've ever known. Over fifty years of slinging shot through a sling shot.

I've never been any good with a slingshot. I was surprisingly good with a blowgun. Well, good for someone with 20/400 vision. I could hit a coke can at five or eight paces depending on who was pacing. Hell, that is 40 paces to the propelry sighted.

Amanda's brother Danny was good with a sling for a long time. I envied him that and the fact that he got laid more than I did. Then he went blind and I had to lean the lesson not to envy any one for anything. You should respect what others have in the form of skill. You can aspire to compete. Do not envy. There is a huge difference. I hope I've learned this lesson. Sometimes when I catch myself envying someone for a skill or an attribute , I have to remind myself not to envy.

Gamists rule the modern world

Well, they think they do.

Gamists rule the world. Gamists are the people who tweak every little thing around themselves including themselves to get the absolute best result out of everything around them. You might ask "Isn't everyone a gamist?" I would answer no. They are test pilots. They are politicians. They are used car salesman. They are programmers. Not every one in the world is detail oriented or a detail freak perfectionist. That is the attribute that gets you ahead in this age.

There is simply too much to learn now. People used to learn farming or ranching or fishing ( on a commercial scale) or cloths making or botany or smithing or any other of a million useful things that people need as a society to survive.

These things are nearly always done by others now. We outsource the bits that gamists are not good at.

Management and layers run the world now. People want to tell others to hurry up. I guess that seems like less work. It makes people feel dominant. It is all fake. No wonder our economy has failed. We have based our livelihood on yelling at people to do their job and not doing it ourselves.

I blame gamists. They got too good at what they were doing in the first place and passed that duty on to others. Now, they have screwed up what they are doing and let the same gamists continue to screw things up  The bankers who didn't like the rules had the rules changed to fit their needs. The financiers ran the entire economy in to the ground and walked away with half the world owing them money.

Survivalists are simulationists. Farmers are Narrativists. I am an observer. I prefer watching and reading about things to dealing with them. I'm the weakest and least effective of all.

Very Local News

• I was listening to one of the geek podcasts yesterday. This is one of the less organized podcasts. The guy was driving in his car and complaining about things that he had a hard time getting to work in Linux. "So I said 'fuck!!' Oh fuck! I'm not supposed to say 'fuck'. I'll have to edit that out later. ..."
• There was a meeting this afternoon that was a pre-planning meeting. Planing meetings are to get a group to gather and make a plan for moving forward in a group. The pre-planning meeting is to get the planners on the same page so every one in the larger group meeting next week have some guidance. I didn't like the looks on people's faces, head in hands, as they left the pre-planning meeting.
  One might argue that this is a sign of minds coming together with friction and ideas being honed into something real.
  I call it clash of alpha types. so many trying to drag things in a direction not very distant from the group. Some pull just because they can. Some really believe.
  
• My neck hurt at points in the day. I've mentioned it is from whip-lash in a car wreck a decade ago. I thought about getting surgery for it and the idea that I've thought lying around blogging all day would be a cool way to live. Well, I do not want to be the quadriplegic blogger. Just saying.

Outlook doesn't suck

I used to keep track of my time in Outlook at my old job. I used to do a lot of organization with Outlook at my old job. When I came to my current job I was glad to be rid of Outlook to be honest. It felt like a crutch or a leash or something.

Now that my current company is making me keep track of every second of my day, I wish we had Outlook or some equivalent mechanism to allow me to graphically display how many hours I spent doing what. I could spot gaps and catch problems before they happened. It was nice looking back on a week and get an idea of what ate up all my time in a glance. You can just drag and drop task time over hours or even past other tasks if you worked on two things at once. It helped me avoid multitasking. I'm terrible at multitasking. I know this. I miss that crutch.

Others gripe about not having a tool like this around. I'm not the only one who had experience at another company with the same issues. We already use a bunch of Microsoft servers. How hard can it be to set up Exchange server to do the whole scheduling/calender thing? If I ask this at work, I'll be the one assigned the task. So, I do not ask. I know the end result is useful and would save time, but I have no idea how to get it working and would look like an idiot in front of the bosses.

So, how in the world can I communicate this need to the up-ity-ups without getting tagged with the label "Outlook Boy?" Well, Some of my bosses read my blog. =P

Very Local News

• Obama's stimulus package will spend a hell of a lot of money. Our children's money. There are "Buy American" rules involved that look a bit like protectionism. So What? America needs to stick up for herself. We are not any better than them. We are us, and they are them. We need to look out for us. Trust me, they are looking out for themselves.
• My neck hurts. It has for weeks. It is an old injury from being rear-ended with my ex-wife many years ago. It was over ten years. My neck hurts to turn right too far. It hurts in my shoulder. The pain gets worse after hours on the computer. It is whiplash. When the wreck happened, I turned my head just before to figure out where the screech noise was coming from.
• Ft. Leavenworth doesn't want the Guantanamo 'detainees'. Some spokes person said Leavenworth Kansas is not ready for the logistics of a prison in a prison. Nor is the small city prepared for the protests and terrorists attacks that would make the city a target. The citizens are genuinely concerned.
• Any trials are going to be a circus. No evidence for a conviction. Can't let them go because they are so dangerous.
• If they are transfered to foreign countries, what guarantees they will be held and not just released?
• If they set foot on U. S. soil, they suddenly get rights.
• We could just release them, wait for them to surface again as a terrorist and take them out then. This is what I'm betting on.
• I have an idea. Let them go. Let a rumor leak to the terrorists that these guys have some kind of tracker in them and we know everything they know. They won't last five minutes on the street.
• I listened to a podcast that started off with a sound that I thought was children playing. It had young voices shouting in an excited way and thump noises like little feet running. The announcer came on. The first word out of his mouth was "Riots in ..." The sound was of people rioting. It kind of made me sit back and think about my auditory filters.
• Honey bees are dying off at an alarming rate. They have been around far longer than most mammals. I heard somewhere bees came before flowers. It will seriously crack me up if the end of civilization is brought on by sick bees. i should write a post-apocalyptic dram with the extinction of bees as the catalyst for the upheaval.
• Tuesdays are light on delivering mail. No one mails stuff on Saturday or Sunday. The USPS wants to drop Tuesday delivery to save a buck. Whatever. I have no opinion on this except if the USPS needs to start paying taxes just like every one else. I know it will run the cost of some things up, but so  be it. Charge a dollar for a stamp. That is where it is headed anyway.
• A story about a battle in Gaza is discounted by the press because there is so little evidence on the ground of a fight. They site the lack of shell casings for AK-47 and RPGs as evidence. Those things are worth money. I guarantee they are picked up by someone to be sold for the metal or for reloading. Lack of evidence is not proof one way or the other. Frigging NPR.
• My little USB sound card thing came in handy. Someone came in to run a demo of some kind on our of our lab machines. None of which have a sound card. The demo went well. The crappy quality of the sound that comes out of that device didn't appear to be a factor. I wonder if we will end up with a sound card in one of the lab boxes. $3 + $5 shipping well spent. I have no idea where they found the speakers. I put on my earphones twenty five times throughout the afternoon. Knew I should have bought a half dozen of those things.

Very Local News

• The Super Bowl is this Sunday. Super Sunday makes me ill. Some folks say it is Father's day, not Father's Day. Hell, it rose Frank Deford to song. Not many sport events can say that.
  
• One advantage of working at a small company was you didn't have to nitpick every minute of your day. At my old job with the huge corporation, we had to track and assign every minute we were on the property. Well, our small company is starting the same thing. This without the aid of Outlook calendar or Blackburies.
  
• I added someone's email to my gmail last night. It is scary how satisfying it is to have someone's information. It feels good adding a friend's email to my database of people and businesses. Not sure I get why.
• I downloaded Windows 7 beta. I have not installed it yet. I have not found a virtual machine on which to run it. No sure I will bother. I'm still hearing both good and bad. Some podcasters are calling it Vista 2.0. Not sure what that means. Some think it is a usable Vista that is not bogged down half as bad as Vista was. Great. What am I supposed to do with my family's Vista machines? I suppose Microsoft would like me to fork over the $200 for a new OS. Screw that.
  
• From Sony game devision "You can come in last and still be the leader." That kind of thinking brought us Betamax. Loosers. Remember, Sony sells more PS II than PS III.
  
• Red Hat will surpass Sun soon in market share. It will probably not last. Sun has plenty in the pipe for future gains. I use Red Hat every day. I have it on my desktop and most of my servers at work. We have a Sun box somewhere.
  
• Kermode ranted about 7 pounds. I caught the twist right off. I figured out what was going on early on. I didn't think much of the movie. I do not feel provoked by it. I guess that is the why Kermode is a critic and I just complain.
• I am so tired that I cannot function. My eyes are tired. My brain is fried. I'm hungry. I'm lazy and I just can't function right now.
  

Very Local News

• I had a meeting this morning. The meeting is choked in a small room with second hand chairs. The chair I sat in leaned forwarded just a little bit. My testicles fell asleep. I texted this to Twitter, which forwards it to Facebook and MySpace. I got a response. People are reading these things. I had no idea.
• Bush and the right have been all against abortion. I believe they have the right to fight for that cause. The right has fought for the death penalty. Those two statements do not conflict in my book. I don't care if that makes me a conservative. The one thing the conservatives have done to piss me off is the stifling of stem-cell research. Not only is it important to help people, but it is important to keeping the U. S. on top of science. This is one thing I've very glad the new administration finds worth pursuing.
• My goodness I had a busy day today. I got a lot done. I have more to do tomorrow. That's normal I suppose. We have two large long term projects coming to a head at about the same time. I'm typically brought in at the last minute so guess what. I'm double pounded. go Kelly.
  
• Someone with influence over  U. S. federal web sites said something rather profound. From memory: "If the federal government wants to change the way the U. S. web pages are handled, they first have to figure out what they have and then figure out what needs to change." That is profound because he is saying the U. S. government has no idea what they are talking about. I love it.

LOST

Come on. I still can't figure this frigging show out. I wasn't able to watch the show on TV when it plaid. I cannot watch it online because CBS are a bunch of assholes who do not support the soon to be most popular OS on the planet. Screw you CBS. I find my episodes as needed elsewhere. People may sound a bit like a chipmunk. I get as much out of it as possible.

As for lost, I think it most appropriate TV series title in the history of TV. Because, I'm lost. Lost and a half. I'm getting to the point I'm going to need a cheat sheet to remember people's names. Who's kid is who's. Who killed who and why. Who does?

Human Rights are a load of crap

The truth is inadmissible as evidence in Europe. Netherstan coming to a continent near you.

I'll respect Islam when it respects me. It is called the golden rule. Respect is a two way street.

Smart Crow

I've seen a dog look cook ways before crossing a street and plenty of humans who didn't. I wonder if all the life forms out there are just laughing at us when we are not looking.

Very Local News

• I heard a politician use the term 'disquietude'. "There has been disquietude on the subject." It must be a word because the spell checker didn't complain. He meant 'bitching'. Next time someone is bitching at me I'm going to retort "Discontinue your disquietude!" and note the look on their face.
  
• From the 'careful what you wish for' category; a bunch of the talking heads this weekend were wonder what the hell we, the nation, are going to do with all the really bad assholes in Cuba.
  
• Briton finally admits they are in a resection. news outlets are calling this a depression when no one is watching. Not just in the U. K. either.
  
• I need to go to the eye doctor. I go every year whether I need too or not because  had eye surgery all those years ago, just to <eh-hem> keep an eye on things. This time I've found myself putting it off because i want to replace the glasses I have with some thick framed geek glasses. I'm trying to wait until the urge passes before heading to the doctor. Sad.
• Microsoft has 90% of the market and can't keep it's huge margins boiling over. MS announced 8000 job cuts.

Blog Skills

I listened to a short story last night about two bloggers who survive the end of the universe because they have the skills of communication needed to organize the new universe. It was funny to hear. I was rooting for the pare who of course had an Adam and Eve motif. One of the notions was organizing the complaints and linking needs with solutions. The author of the story was  blogger. I think a couple of plumbers will  be picked as the survivors of the universe. Plumbers know what's up.

My blog has made me a better speller. I have a much easer time looking things up on the internet. I document more stuff. I tell less bullshit stories without backing them up with facts or at least a link. Links to something that agree with your story are not proof. I type better. I have better skills in telling a story in writing. It is good practice. It is good excise for the parts of my brain that are not worked very often.

None of these are going to save me in case of an apocalypse. I make zero money through this blog. I am not part of the blog community. I do not participate in the get togethers.

The Media

The world media has become too strong. Their influence is world wide. I listened to an interview with a Jewish teen in France who said (from memory) "Your opinion depends on what channel you watch. There might be graphic videos of bad things in Gaza with no explanation or showing the other side."

The trouble is ratings. Every news organization lives and dies by the number of people paying attention. Even the BBC, that is supposedly paid for by the TV fee charged by the U. K. government, pays very close attention to the ratings. Shows come and go, people rise and fall by the ratings. Tell me that isn't true.

No one is out for the facts. Not even me. Who wants the truth? I pay it lip service, but I'm not sure I want to know the truth. I have something I believe and i want to know things that reinforce my beliefs. That is for comfort. I do have an open mind. I do not want to hear descanting views. I do not seek them out. They come and some times I change my mind. Sometimes I do not. It depends on my mood and the information. It depends on who tells me and how they present the information. Everything matters.

Media does not make you think anything. They put what they want you to think in front of your nose. They choose what stories get plaid and when. They choose what facts are at the top of the article. They pick the headline. People who take the videos and write the stories know what is up. They start from the beginning trying to manufacture something that will make it to the top of that list. Let's face it, that is how they get paid and promoted.

The answer is not so easy. The blogsphere is doing some of this. For example, the Israel Hamas conflict is overrun with people screaming at the top of their lungs on the internet via blogs. Sometimes not even their own blogs. I have to tell you, Europe gets a lot more information about this conflict than we get in the U. S.. The reason I know this is because I read some European blogs that complain about how bias all that coverage is.

Hubless Motorcycle

My dad sent me this video out of the blue. His bike is pretty stock. I like stock Harleys. I think the mods are cook, but cost way too much money. The bike in the video is not even shown taking a corner at any speed. Can it turn?

Blogs and Acidamia

I read some blogs today. One woman said the she now realizes that Obama is much like Carter. I do not believe that Obama is half the anti-Semite that Carter is. Another blog spoke of the seed of discontent as people who seemed to warship Obama during the campaign. He does not walk on water. Obama is not worthy of faith. No man or woman or child or idle is worthy of faith. Nor is an idea.

I spent some of my morning watching a documentary covering the Big Bang Theory. Those theorists are at it again. Any time someone doesn't agree with the numbers that already exist, they are ostracised from universities and research grants. No communication and no money. Sounds like heresy has its price. It can still end careers. It reminds me greatly of scientists being silenced over the contrary research coming as a result of research in to global warming.

The documentary made this comparison. It is far from my idea. It is something that has been growing in my mind for some time. In order to get a PHD, you have to agree with and promote your PHD consultant who is someone who already has a PHD in the field.  It is true in Art History and it is true in Political Science and it is true in Physics. Aspeically Physics and the sciences. Because so many peopl3e in the liberal sciences and the hard science have renounced the existence of God, they feel they must replace their belief with something else. Anything that conflicts with that belief is the same as someone saying there is no God to a priest. The very premise of everything they are everything they have learneed everything they believe in has just been whacked by some upstart.

Higher education needs in this civilization needs an enima.

Late Saturday

So, Elle made it home about 17:00 or so. Maybe it was later. She sat down and worked on a huge drawing she brought home. Nat came home a bit later. She didn't get out of work until 18:20 or so. We watched some TV.  Then we watched some more TV. Nat is worn out. It has been a rough couple of first days. They are setting up a new store. Something tells me she will have a long string of rough days. The kind of store it is does not lend itself to leisurely punching a clock. I don't want to jinx her, but I just feel they will gyp her out of hours and do everything in their power to make sure they get what they want and she gets as little as possible. That is the only way to make things work these days for a small business. I don't know how you could do it any other way.

I downloaded a video and I have to resize it to get it to fit on a data DVD. That is, I have to cut it down. The movie was just about 3GB and no other movie would fit on the DVD with it. It pisses me off to have to resort to only one movie on a data DVD so the resolution and quality have been cut along with the credits. I've done this sort of thing before, when I was trying to get things to fit on a CD, one movie at a time. It has been a while. That was back in my Windows days. Video editing was so much easier then.

Nat is helping Elle get ready for bed. She will not be far behind. I will be up for a while yet. Doing what, I do not know. Nat has work again tomorrow. It will be Elle and I for the whole day. I hope we come up with some interesting things to talk about. I may try to convince her to start a blog. She is already the third best photographer in the compound.

Tree-b-gone

Tree trimming made easy, and fun.

The next time we need a bunch of trees cut down, we are renting one of these things. It eats through trees in a fun way. I wonder how much experience that operator has. Flipping trees around like that cannot be easy the first time round. I wonder what the limitations are. I suppose I could go look them up, but I would rather just assume it will work.

Hoopty Tank

That tank needs a valve job. This is a real fight somewhere in Sri Lanka.

Babylon AD

I'm watching Babylon AD. This movie was destroyed in the press. I like it. It is a bit too pretentious on the future. It is ugly and has a dark outlook. What is that word for a bleak future. Resurrection complex. I wanted more of the life in Russia that plays out in the beginning. The rest of the movie was kind of boring.

Hanging out alone on a Saturday

Long titles to posts mean a lack of focus for me. I'm sitting in front of my computer on a Saturday morning surfing the net. I'm listing to blog being read to me by my computer. I'm drinking some tasteless chocolate milk and a non-brand soda. If you know me, you would think I was in heaven.

I miss Nat and Elle. I miss the noise. I miss Elle wanting me to pick her up and swap the movie in the DVD player every hour. I miss her watching cartoons for hours while talking to herself in the form of playing. It is cold and wet so we will probably not get a trip to the park this weekend. Last weekend was made wonderful by that trip.

Nat isn't here because she started working. I'll let her tell you where. It is in retail and she will probably have to work every weekend for a while. She did get shoved kicking and screaming in to a no-raise supervisory position her second day. bitchiness leadership is one of her traits.

Nat was cleared by her doctor to lift and work. She is doing both. She came home last night so tired after setting up shelves and putting up merchandise that she simply fell on the couch. She is back at it today. I wish I could ask her how things are going but she, of course, cannot take calls or texts at work. Still, It would be nice to hear her voice.

This move means we will have less time together.. This is bad. I'm not sure where to go with that statement. It is bad. I'll leave it at that.

I'm off to be lonely. I'll post to the blog to pass the time.

Very Local News

Written 2009-01-23

• My work just ordered some more boxes with no CD or DVD drive. This is less money, but it can be a pain when you are trying to install an operating system. This box has SATA drives, so I will not need to boot from a CD and then use a USB drive to mimic a floppy in order to install SCSI drivers before installing specific Microsoft OS versions. That is annoying to type, much less perform.
• Engines of our Ingenuity did a story about the technology of "The Beatles" albums and all the different technological leaps from old to new.
• There are a ton of geek podcasts out there. Some of them are just a guy making a wave file with a headset on. Some, however, are well produced with research, editing, and a love for many things geek. I'm impressed.
  The one's that have someone laughing at any point, all have that geeky laugh.  You know, "hawa-hawa" or something like that. It is difficult to spell.  It cracks me up.
  
• I was flipping through the channels before work this morning. Mr Ed. was on. I nearly dropped my jaw.

Train Wreck

Not sure when this happened. This is a propane explosion followed rapidly by secondary explosions and power outages. Those green flashes must be transformers going in the area. The cop performs high speed  tactical withdrawal, with prejudice. This happened in Texarkana.

Ridiculous Motorcycle

That is a Russian tank engine. Sounds like a diesel. Some people have too much time on their hands. I wonder how much this contraption cost.

Obama Notes

Historic Comparisons

People keep comparing Obama to Lincoln and Kennedy. They have valid points. I hope not so much the same.

• Lincoln:
  
• Divide the nation in two and have a civil war.
  
• Assassinated.
  
• Kennedy:
  
• Cuban Missile Crisis. This ended up working out without nuclear war, but could have been handled better.
  
• Bay of Pigs. Tell people to over through their own government and then completely abandon them when they do.
  
• Assassinated.

I hope Obama both excels at and survives the presidency.

Bush Comparison

For all the ragging Bush gets, he did a pretty good job of keeping terrorists from attacking the U. S. mainland again. He took the fight to them. That is more than I expect from Obama.

Bush was boring except for the gaffs. it was his most notable attribute for stupid people to latch on to. Bush had the entire world media working against him. Bush is a bad public speaker. it was easy to pick and poke fun until every one got in on the act. It has become a running joke. I never thought it was funny. I was worried that the office of president would be hurt. At least that has not happened. It pains me when some official cracks some joke at Bush's expense and an American laughs at it. They know not what damage they do.

One thing I think Obama is doing correctly is keeping the web page and email list he built during his campaign running. Something I thought bush needed was a public relations manager working on his side. It looks like Obama will have one. That is smart. Not only does the legacy media like Obama, he is taking initiative to make sure it stays that way.

Oath

Obama screwed up the oath. They redid the oath in a more private session Wednesday 2009-01-21 evening just to be sure everything was nice and legal. This does not help the criticism that Obama is a puppet of the Democratic party and cannot perform without a Teleprompter.

Race

Obama is of mixed race. I believe his father was 100% black and his mother was 100% white. Wait, can that be? Is any one a purebred? No, I think if you dig deep enough you will find a bit of just about everything in the wood pile. I really wish the world would redefine the word 'race'.

Very Local News

• I have fewer podcasts now. I dumped some that sucked. I do not have a full day's worth of podcasts to eat up the background. I listen to music in the gaps. Mostly, lately, I work. I haven't had time to listen to things. I get all kinds of work done while listening, but much of my work has been in labs and other places in the building. I'm not at my desk as much. Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to podcasts.
  
• The BBC is bitching constantly that reporters are not let in to Gaza. They have no trouble taking calls from inside Gaza. They have no trouble believing everything said as though it were gospel. The UN compound got shelled, or hit by fallout from shelling. They are bitching to any one who will listen.
  
• France has six hundred thousand Jews and five million Muslims. (BBC)
• I need to stop consuming powdered coffee creamer. It is like eating concrete that is specifically designed to clog the arteries.
• Busy days go fast. Many people say this. I don't get much down time. I have no plans to retire that make any sense.Do busy lives go quickly as well? Will I work until I drop? That is the plan.

Windows 7 Beta

I've heard that Windows 7 sucks. I've heard it doesn't suck as bad as Vista. I've heard it is Vista with a bug fix or two. I've heard it won't make any difference. I've heard it stole the apple bottom of the screen icon thing, I think it is called a dock. Mostly I figure it won't make much difference.

I use what is available. I would like to try Windows 7 on a virtual box. I have no intention on upgrading anything. Oh, except my linux boxes. I upgrade those every couple days, at no charge.

One of the podcasters was very impressed with this thing called Windows LiveWriter. That sounds like a fun thing. He was impressed with the price. He called it free, but you had to buy Windows. It is not free, it is included. There is a difference.

This same guy said that people buy the Acer netbook with Ubuntu installed and have to buy a $100 software to get it to work. Dumbass. He is just a Linux-phoebe. I've heard a bunch of these tech podcasters who are terrified of Linux. They just 

Very Local News

• The economic downturn may help Linux in the long run.
• I have a jagged edge on one of my bottom teeth. It isn't cutting me, but it drives me nuts when my tung gets caught on the little edge.   
  
• Fiat and Chrysler are teaming up in a completely non-comical fashion that guarantees neither company will accept blame for failure. Chrysler has not made a decent vehicle other than a pickup truck in over since the 1971 Challenger. Fiat is second only to the Italian government for disorganization and has never made a decent vehicle that made it to the U. S.. I would enjoy watching the implosion of both companies if they were not doing it on my (an American tax payer) dime.
• I kept getting email from news places at work telling me the day-1 decisions 44 has made. Something about salaries at the White House and closing Guantanamo. Nothing I didn't expect. Please  do not send me an email every time the man grabs a pen. I'm not worried about it.
• Seagate says they have a 1 TB drive with bad firmware. The drive will simply stop an once it sops there is no chance of getting your data off. There will be no firmware fix because there is no way to write the firmware to the drive. There will be no recall because the drives were so cheap in the first place. If your drive goes dead you are just screwed.

Signature quote of the day

I know what you're thinking, punk. You're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' To tell the truth I forgot myself in all this excitement - but as I deal in English, the most powerful language in the world with subtle nuances that may blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' Well do you punk?

Nice. Very Nice.

Saw this on an ed2k site forum. A couple sites are down and no one seems to know why. RIAA must be on the ball this year.

Diagnose This

Nat watches a bunch of the medical shows. One of them is House. I hate the show. I don't like the primary character. He is a needless pill-popping jerk. I like holding doctors to higher standards. Drunks.

I had a box that one of the graphic interfaces was not working properly. I ran through the entire setup for all our products and still no luck. I eliminated all our stuff. This took the better part of a day. I then switched this morning to stuff that is not our code. I reinstalled the video driver and regenerated the xorg.conf. It worked. Fixed the problem. If I had started there, I might have fixed the trouble in ten minutes. No one died. One of my fellow employees didn't have access to that machine as soon as she needed it. I wish now that I had started at the right place.

I had messed with the xorg.conf, but not replaced it. I hadn't reinstalled the driver. One of those steps did the trick. As it turns out someone else had taken a look at the X configuration as well. I wonder if our combined effort is what caused the problem to begin with.

How do you know where to begin? How do you know when to give up and start over? How do you know when to declare the patient dead? This box is the third I tried to get to work. One machine had the wrong slots. Another had bad hard drive configuration. This one had a robust enough motherboard and plenty of ram and drive space. I'm committed to getting something to work.

Thank goodness the people who asked me to set this system up allowed time for problems. Knowing all those answers is called experience. I'm getting experience every minute I'm at my current job. When I was at the old huge employer a couple years ago, they had everything documented and procedure-written out the wazoo. It sapped people's innovation and stifled creativity. Everything was predictable. There are arguments and advantages both ways.

Next time. . . One of my buddies told me that this kind of error is preferable to a real "There is a fundamental flaw in the design." kind of error. I suppose he is right. I should learn and move forward. Besides, it wasn't our stuff that was messing up (Nvidia!).

Very Local News

• There are twice as many ministers in the U. K. today as there were when Churchill was prime minister.
• A couple of times during the day people stopped in the hall to discuss the inauguration. Mostly laugh at all the hype and ask something to the effect "What happens when he can't walk on water?" Same thing that always happens. People will complain and prey for change.
• Volkswagen and GM are number one at the moment in China. China is paying people to buy cars.  The entire industry is rushing to fill the gaps.
• A sociologist said that the more we learn about Obama the less we will like him as a nation. He is starting from too high a pedestal. He is like dating a super model. The stupid bitch is hidden behind the pretty ass. That is my analogy in case you couldn't tell.
  
• There are new rules in the U. K. for health and safety. There are situations where employees might go to jail for not following the rules.
• I got my 401/K statement earlier this month. It is still sitting on my desk, unopened. I would have done better sticking the money under the mattress.
  
• Spain has 16% unemployment. Some worry it will collapse and take the Euro with it. Some speculate the country most likely to leave the Euro is Germany because their economy is barring the brunt of the troubles and propping up the rest of Europe.
  Wake up to Money used the D word. "Depression" looms. It took a year to call it a recession.
  In the U. K. housing prices are so low that every one is trying to buy and people are taking their properties off the market and hanging on.
  
• I listened to a tech podcast today that mentioned a diving computer that you ware while diving, that does some really cool stuff. It looks like a large watch. It syncs with your computer for keeping records. It uses solar power. It has a sensor you put on the tank that keeps track of pressure and gas time. Whatever that is.  It even has GPS. It is an OLED display as well.
• A bunch of HD TVs will have 802.11n wireless built in. Some warn that this 802.11n is the new 802.11g. Don't get caught out of fission.
  
• Dow drops 332 points on Obama's inauguration day. Not a good sign.

Worry-Wort

I am a worrier. I would prefer to be a warier, but that is not my lot.

Example:

Friday about 15:00 or so One of my fellow employees mentioned in the hall that he wanted to ask me a question off the clock. Now This guys is a good sole. He is salt of the earth. I'm not sure I would call us friends. We could be.

I'm thinking he needs to tell me about some person I pissed off at work, or something he over heard about me or my employment. This is on a Friday remember. I stewed all weekend. What does he want to ask? What did I do?

Before I took off for the day, I asked Adam about it. He had no idea what the other employee wanted. All I succeeded in doing was making Adam paranoid all weekend too. "What if it is about me!?" Hell, Adam even texted me Sunday about it. He never does that kind of thing.

So, I get in Monday and hit the wheel pretty hard. I crank out several things. I stop after about two hours for a breath and to fire off an email to the other employee. I didn't get through the first sentence, when he walks in my office.

He is a coin collector and has been reading articles about how the visually impaired are mad at the U. S. government for not having some mechanism built in to printed curacy to tell what denomination it is. He wanted to know my two cents.

I told him I I really like the idea of using coins for the one dollar bill and revamping the other denominations for nonvisual identification. I also mentioned a mobile phone that can take a picture of money and tell you what denomination it is. It works for Mexican and Canadian money too.

I called Adam after the other employee, what the hell, buddy left my office and told him what it was all about. He had some relief in his voice.

Nat was in on the exchange from Friday evening. She said "You guys have a middle school dram going on." in a condescending smirk. Ain't she cute?

After the drama, it was back to work. I did have a bit more spring in my step after that was resolved. See kids, it never ends. It just involves higher stakes.

Today's Videos

After Fuddrudker's we went to the playground and park over in the bird sanctuary across from our home.

Playground

Birds and puppies and kids, oh my

Fifteen minutes after the playground we invaded the bird area.

Thoughts

It was the most beautiful day in a long time. I suppose that is why the playground and bird area were packed. More people are out there enjoying the fasilities.

Quality

You know, that Flip takes good video. Appologies for the shake and stupid comentary. It is going to take some doing to get used to this tinny camera. I'm sure there is a trick to holding it that will keep the gitters down. The camera did fine thoght. For what it is, you get pretty darn good video.

Fuddruckers

Before and After. Elle will kill me in a couple years for this blackmale shot. hehe.

Video on Fedora 10 continued

I figured something out. The software was lying to me. The reason the sound was off is the numbers were off inside the file. I took a peak at the internal data of one of the files I generated and found a number wrong compared to what I was telling the software. It turns out, that no matter what you do, you have to regenerate or render everything, every time you do anything. You cannot just let the software 'copy' content when you do a final cut. If you do it with video, you get sync problems between the different clips. If you do it with sound, the wrong numbers end up all over the place. This is odd because people recommend using copy if you can get away with it.

I have one software called Avidemux working to the point I can cut and stitch things together. It takes ages to render the final cut, but this is highe definition video technically. Besides, the files are massivly smaller post render. This makes storage and posting much easier. This is not the advanced software called Cinelerra, which allows all kinds of interesting stuff. Avidemux (where did they get the name?) is pretty much for cutting, stitching and converting. It looks like you can do some other basic stuff, but I do not see any way to add text for example. I think avidemux was designed to chop up and stitch together dowloaded videos. No need to add text to those. It has support for subtitles for example.

Mac

I may be to the point of buying a Mac. I don't intend to, but that is what it is going to take to get my Flip Mino HD to allow me to edit videos in Linux. I'm at my wit's end. I'm done. I tried Ubuntu in a virtual machine with the exact same results. Nothing worked. I give up.

If I take videos straight off the Flip and load them to YouTube, they work fine. If I try to edit them with any software in Linux, the sound gets off and there is absolutely nothing to be done about it. There must be, but I don't know what it is and I give up.

...

Then I tried messing with one other setting.

Fedora 10 woes continued

Latest complaints

• Ctrl-alt-plus and minus do not work to zoom the resolution of the screen.
• The resize command no longer does anything except take up time for xterm. OK, you can use the -geometry parameter of xterm. Still, it pisses me off.
  

I'm telling you, I'm going Ubuntu. Not that it will fix anything. It is just something else to try in the name of competition. I'm downloading the DVD as I type.

Extraction

Pretty cool extraction if you ask me. I can't tell what kind of chopper that is, but it has to be a Chnook or an Osprey. Amazing pileting skills to pull this kind of stuff off. The pilot is basically hovering at negative altitude.

Update

This looks like a very similar manurer done at an air show.

Weak Blog

This blog is not what I would call a real blog. A real blog informs the readers about things. There is research. There is more than complaining and wining. I have not spoken about the situation in Israel. I'm am 100% pro Israel and 100% for the elimination of a Palestinian threat to Israel. There is my position on that matter, love it or lump it. A real blog is more than a place to speak your (the author's) mind. Something has to be said that matters beyond the author's world. This may happen innately to some authors. Let's face it, some folks simply have important things to say. There was a stripper's blog I read for a while that was informative and gave a gimps in to that world. There was a blog by a firefighter that gave a gimps in to the politics behind being in the rescue business. Oddly enough both of them ended up becoming sales people and their blogs suffered greatly.

Lots of blogs cover a niche. I do not. Some are geek gadget blogs, anti-this/that, location based, person (as in famous) based. All these kinds of blogs have a draw because they act as a filter to let people know how that particular niche is being filled in new and innovative ways every day. This is not one of those blogs.

The niche of this blog is me. You, the reader, get to read about me. That is not enough for most folks. I don't blame them. I like reading personal blogs like this one. They are fading from the scene though. I've been reading that the era of the blog has come to an end. That is not true. What people expect from blogs has changed. Readers want more than what you ate for lunch. If you want to post about what you ate for lunch and your average post only has three sentences of value to it, you need Twitter. 

This blog is a personal blog. I put up what catches my fancy. I complain, praise (I do , sometimes), bitch and moan, and I put up some things that just might teach you something. Not often though. I'm just not that info4rmative of a guy.

Very Local News

• The White House was built 200 years ago (1790s) in a large part by slaves.
• There is an ATI ES1000 chip for embedded video motherboards that has no Windows XP driver. It says "server" it its name and by God they mean it. It works fine in Linux, Windows Server 2003 2008. No XP driver. I have no idea about Vista. We don't use it. I had to scrounge up an old PCI card just to get windows to scroll in the same minute you spun the wheel.
• One of the guys at work and I had to run around the different labs today trying to find a machine he could use to run a simulator. it's funny how many hoops you have to jump through to find a box that fits the bill and is not in use by someone else. There are dozens people looking for just the right combination of hardware and software and sharing resources.
  

Video Editing on Fedora Linux

Well, not editing video on Fedora Linux. I can't get the windows software to work under Wine either. No one has on the internet that I can find. I'm at an end.

I knew Cinelerra would not work. it has the same trouble the other software had. That is, the sound is off from the movie after editing. Even when I follow the example line by line of someone who knows what they are doing, I get bad results. This makes me think there is a bad library involved. It is deeper than bad settings. My choices for export are check for check and still, nothing.

This means, I cannot edit video on my system. I'm going to create a Ubuntu virtual machine and try to edit a simple video. Find out if that works. If so, I may give up on Fedora completely and make a more permanent switch to Ubuntu for all my home Linux needs.

When this fails as well, I will ask Nat if I can barrow her computer just long enough to edit a video and find out if the software that came with the device works. I'm confident that this will work.

When I play videos straight off the device, they play fine. Well, they play fine when I tell my machine to shut up and get on with it. The problem lies with my machine and my limited knowledge of all things video. As these things go, I figure it will take me about eighteen months from first attempt to get video editing to work as I planned. This is about the normal period for me to really get something to work in Linux. Sad, but true.

When none of this works, I'll buy a Mac. (not)

Toy Request

One of the podcasts had a story about a remote helicopter with a camera on it. Live streaming video to your laptop. Nice, but who the hell can fly those things? I need an auto pilot that flies that thing from start to finish and just takes verbal commands like "Take off. Fly over there. hover. Up 5 meters. Come back home and land." let me know when you have one of those. I'm sure the military and law enforcement would like  them too. This is a niche waiting to be filled.

The military has a bunch of options for RC aircraft with cameras. I remember a quote "It is like having a marine that is a hundred meters tall with a pare of binoculars." Sounds useful. The device I'm thinking of was just thrown by one marine and flown by a simple remote with a screen in it.When you wanted to land it, you just kind of crashed it in to something soft. There were no landing gear, just a ruggedized bottom. They must know jar-heads.

There is a Myth Busters that shows the guys trying to fly an RC helicopter. They also got a little trainer chopper that was basically designed to crash a million times and just put back together. The tech guy played with a simulator and still had a great deal of trouble with the chopper. They never did appear to get the chopper to fly properly.

I've tried my hand at flying a chopper on the nervous-child setting (really easy) and still had a difficult time not crashing. It is just plane hard. I've heard it compared to standing on a board on a boiling ball and trying to get work done while people are shooting at you. Well, that was flying a chopper in combat.

There are some videos on YouTube of RC choppers with firearms attached. This just worries the hell out of me. Those things go hey-wire on the drop of a hat. I can just see someone demoing their new military grade assault RC Avenging Angle 9000 when someone gets a phone call on the wrong band. I picture this chopper doing going Death Blossom on a bunch of VIPs thinking of funding the project.

The gun thing has bad idea written all over it. The camera thing sounds really useful. You can inspect properties for squatters. There are any number of security uses for one of these things. Even low level sports at the collage and high-school level could benefit from something like this. Drug dealers could use them to keep an eye on the cops. Peeping-toms will be the early adopters. They will help work out the bugs before legitimate users turn up.

I want to take a bunch of footage of the racers. The preserve across the street would be a great place to do some low fly over at sun set sorties. Then there are any 100 things I would like to film at Faire. Some might take an infrared camera. That shouldn't be a chore. I'm sure I could think of some other cool stuff too.

There will be so many of these things in the air, they will need collision control. This is something that regular aircraft could use too. They will need spacial awareness so they do not fly straight in to a wall or pole. They will need to be regulated so they do not interfere with regular air travel. Aside from privacy, I think they should be band from flying low over private property without express permission of the owners.  This law should be written from a safety stand point, not a privacy one. No one is going to have anything resembling privacy in a couple years.

Very Local News

• Got my 401/K statement today. After swallowing my tung, I decided not to go on a rampage. I can't afford it.
• Three out of four days this week, I've waited outside the front door of work waiting for someone with a key to show up. Shawn used to come in early pretty much every day. That stopped. I'm not the only one. There were four of us this morning. We chatted about body weight and leaning against the glass and steel railing between the north and south side of our office.
• The smog is horrible. There is a brown haze over the city. It is frightening. The sky is blue, but the air is nasty. How are all the buildings not black?
• Heathrow airport is going to get a third runway. I've heard interviews with British MPs and the consensus seems to be that it is inevitable. Some people bought bits of land in the way of the runway to slow things down. There are imminent domain laws in the U. K.. It is a mess.
• I listened to a podcast of a Holocaust survivor. It was painful hearing him say 'storm trooper' . In my life, a storm trooper has been a character from a movie all dressed up in plastic bits. He told a story of Checks throwing bread from bridges in to the trains as they past. It brought tears to my eyes. He is now a judge on international counsels regarding human rights. He was none.
• Ext4 is out. Ubuntu 9 has it available if you manually patrician the drive on install. Nice. I hear it is a leap forward. I cannot remember any of the bullet points. Well, except the maximum file size is 16tb.
• A BlueRay Disk is about 50gb. So, 16tb would be about 320 BlueRay Disks, or about 3636 DVDs in one file.
• I saw some videos of people making home made electric motorcycles. It looks pretty easy. I bet they get some good range as well. The successful ones used dirt bike frames which are rugged and light. One of the guys looked like he got over 40 or so MPH. There are some electric scooters. I would prefer something with a bit more meat on it.
• California is going to put an extra (luxury) tax on large TVs. Every other damn thing too. CA is is broke and looking for excuses to jack your wallet. They are cutting school days. Kids might like that. That will cost people more in child care.
• Rick Steves did a special on Iran. I missed it. I would like to catch it at some point. I think he has an interesting point of view because he is a travel reporter. His gig is enjoying the journey.
• Nat and I are weird. We do not own a game console. Not sure if we would use one. The Wii looks cool. I hear you can still not lay your hands one one. We don't have the spare change it takes to buy one anyway. Then all the games are costly. Then you have to get the online clap-trap.

One more day

On those days when nothing works

You fall behind because you want something right.

The battles are lost for lack of luck.

Good time thrown after bad working on the same old junk that went wrong yesterday.

I could be swimming in an ocean far from life and work.

For the lack of will and money, I run around at work fixing things.

People care. They have their own problems.

Wasn't I supposed do more?

Wasn't I supposed to be more?

What happened to that kid full of wind and dreams?

The child is gone. He found another place to play and dream.

I had a good meal. I have a wonderful family. The world is being OK to me.

It has been a seven eight nine jack queen kind of week

Very Local News

• Got in to work this morning and had trouble getting the on board video disabled in the machine I've been trying to get up and running for a project. This is the third machine I've tried to get to fill this roll. I nearly lost it. It was just a matter of finding the setting in the BIOS, which I did, but I was on edge with this project.
• Did you know that the standard for the PS/2 serial (the little round keyboard and mouse ports) was used to start designing the USB mechanism? I didn't either. How they work is quite different. The idea is similar though. The PS/2 serial ports were supposed to be far more generic than just a keyboard or mouse.
• A Chinese guy running a casino referred to corrupt government officials gambling with public money and said "don't ask, don't tell" in perfect english, and used it properly I might add. That saying has become a ... saying.
• If you are diagnosed with Alzheimer's, there is nothing you can do in the early stages. The stories about what happens to people who survive for a long time kills me. I think it is just as hard for the care takers if not worse.
  
• iPhone and other smart phone have some problems. Cut and paste is rare if even in the future. You can't leave one thing running while something else goes on. People want notebooks in their pockets. that is what I want. I know.
• There is noticeably more sun already. The sun seems to want to stick around.
• Soon, Nat and I will have read the at least one of the same books. J. D. Robb's Purity in Death. It came in as the 'next' book in my ongoing request for science fiction titles from the books on tape for the Blind.

Very Local News

• Iran just ordered thirty thousand tons of tungsten. Tungsten is used in long range missiles and refrigerators. It is mostly desert I suppose.
• AOL is finally abandoning the "walled garden" approach. Ten years too late says I.
• Nothing, and I mean nothing worked today. Every turn lead to a dead end. I had to completely give up at 18:00 (quitting time) and start over. I have people waiting on me. Must make things work. I had a handle on things by the time I walked out the door.
  
• I opened and closed the office today. 07:45 (07:30, but I had to wait for someone with a key) to 20:30 or so. I did get a lunch.. Long day. Nat picked me up from the bus stop. I walked in the door at 21:30.
  
• Nat showed me a Highlights Magazine. I didn't recognize the name. I did recognize the pictures. I think they have been using the same drawings since I wa a kid.
  

Kinder Garden

This morning I sat outside the office waiting for someone with a key to show up and let me in. I was bundled up from the cold with a thick jacket, muffler, and a stocking cap. I sat on the floor leaning against the wall looking out over a huge enclosed atrium that stretches the entire hight and length of our building right down the middle. The sun was coming up and reflecting at many beautiful angles off the different tints of glass on the inside walls of the atrium.

It reminded me of waiting for kinder garden back in Kansas. I used to get dropped off at school in the morning. I would then head for a specific stair well with all the other little kids and wait. The older kids went up stairs to class. The outside of the building was red brick. This is probably why I like red brick. I did not particularly enjoy kinder garden. It was full of do and don't situations that I really never got the hang of.

One day the teacher busted out crying in the middle of class. i turns out her father had died. She got  the call early that morning, but it didn't hit her until the middle of class what had happened. It was my first experience with hysteria.

A kid made a hamburger out of playdo that looked like a real frigging hamburger, pickles and all. I thought it was very well done and was amazed at his talent. Then he took a bite out of it and spit the play doe in the same can we got it from. I didn't much like playing with it after that. I lost any fascination with art and artists in general.

I don't remember the details, but I remember the emotion of wondering why it hurt when a girl laughed at me, and I could care less when a boy made fun of me. I did get in to fights.

We played ring around the rosy and one of the older kids explained that it was really a game about a plague. I remember not really understanding, but I remember the words. I understood them later.

Someone wrote a book about the important things people learn in kinder garden. Froyed was all about the important influences learned at a young age. He gave several generations the excuse of blaming their parents for everything they perceive as wrong in their lives.

Very Local News

• One of the pods had an interview with a banker who made the bank for a couple years. There is a site or book called "Damn it feels good to be a banker." Not bad. They spoke about the four weekends they got during the summer. Bankers worked 80 hour weeks regularly. People coming in at the bottom are considering other opportunities.
• Ex-Enron employees went to work for Wall Street. That is where we got $147 a barrel oil last summer.
• It is day two of the new cat box. It is one of those automatic scooper jobs. The cats sat and stared at the box while shooting looks at each other. So far, no injuries. I'll keep every one up to date.
• Elle turned her nose up at Nat's wonderful home made chicken and noodle soup this evening. Nat told her she could go to bed without dinner and Elle suddenly found an appreciation for home made chicken and noodle soup.
  
• Elle nearly said a proper "R" this evening. Nat and I ganged up on her and pretty much backed her in to a corner. At least she tried. She almost sound enthusiastic. Then she got a raspberry pretzel for a reward.

They didn't miss you

They missed your people, your family, your neighbours, your children. How does that make you feel. If they loose to this tactic then they are better than you.

TV Repair 101

You too can be a plasma TV repairman. This doesn't look like a fake. to me. I'd like to know how long it lasted after this treatment.

Science Fiction and My Brain

I must think much like a science fiction writer. Every time I learn something about quantum or the speed of light or 3D printing (fabricating), my brain takes off on wild what-if laden adventures of "Wouldn't that be scary/interesting/cool?" I mean it happens every time. I can't help it.

It is disheartening in a way because now I know that people who have more gumption (get to it and get it done) than I are thinking the same thing and beating me to the punch. Not that I throw the punch mind you. I haven't written anything I'd call fiction in quite some time. It is not easy. You have to keep a world in you head with all kinds of bits floating around. You are bound to miss something. Someone will read your work and point it out and you will pull a Charlie Brow "UGGGGHHHHH!!!" then throw the notebook across the room.

Let me tell you, hearing the story I thought of months ago, but never acted on written down and published in some magazine kicks off a whole list of paranoid reaction. "Are they in my head?" "Am I the only one who is real?" See what I mean about can't turn it off? If you ever wondered where all these head cases who do wild things come from, it is that part of the brain that is responsible, I promise. The truth is more along the lines that some news blurb, probably on Slashdot, went by that planted that seed in my lazy mind and the mind of someone far more industrious.

The answer here is obvious to me. Get a move on and write down, regardless of how bad it ends up being, your ideas and the stories that come to mind. Plant the seed and let it grow. Don't worry about the result. Find out what the result is. Stick it on the blog and let people laugh at it.

Proof Someone Still Hate the Jews

I wish people would be open minded. I wish so many people would not just automatically blame Israel for violation of Palestinian rights when Hamas is just an arm of the Iranian agenda. Even Egypt is has touble swallowing the crap in the Hamas propaganda machine.

If this were a town in South Texas, I hope we the people would call for the heads those launching the rockets. I hope.

Boring Saturday

I wanted to go to a friend's place to day for his birthday. Things just didn't work out. Nat offered to go, but wasn't sure Elle would like it. She might have dropped me off if I had asked. I didn't have a present. I don't think he would have cared, but my pride ate at me. It would have been fun.

It would have given me something to shoot a video of. I need some motivation to find out if my bailing wire and duct tape software works.

I've sat around listening to blogs. I didn't get out of bed until after noon. Absolutely nothing interesting has happened in the news since before the holidays. OK, that is not entirely true. I just refuse to believe that I missed anything.

This rebuild of the computer allows me to listen to two things at the same time. The last build of Fedora 10 didn't. The only thing I did different this time was install everything available on the DVD. Something in that extra list of software made the sound work better. That on to itself, pisses me off. I would like to know what the difference is so I do not mess it up next time. I would like to be able to install a minimal Fedora if the need arises.

Nat and Elle are watching a bunch of Chick-flicks. We had noodle-house food for dinner. It is a place within walking distance. Nat was unable to walk because she had to drive to get Elle a kid's meal from some fast food place. Elle will not eat spicy. I mean any kind of spicy. If you call ti spicy it is too spicy. To each their own.

Video Editing Notes

Flip Mino HD Using Fedora 10 Linux. Plays fine in MPlayer. Kino takes many times too long to import a simple video. Then the resolution is completely ruined. avidemux works, but the sound is a mile off. mplayer works, but the sound is a mile off. Trying VMWare. It turns out the problem with the audio is in MPlayer, not the editors or the Flip Device. It appears avidemux works for an editor, but I cannot view the finished product because my computer is to slow. I need to come up with a way to get the video playback to force the sound to match the proper frame. I'll figure it out eventually. ... Afte minutes delving though the man pages I found the following that seems to work. There is a bit of skip at the beginning, but what the hell. /usr/bin/player -vfm ffmpeg -lavdopts lowres=1:fast:skiploopfilter=all $1 It looks like this command allows mplayer to skip frames of the video in order to match to the audio. The mplayer folks were very helpful by giving several reasons and example code when it detects a problem such as this. For the record, the error message was extremely helpful. Cinelerra on Fedora 10 (Did not work) Found the following for Fedora 9. Substituted "10" for "9" in the kwizart.net link and it installed. Link Fedora 9 To install Cinelerra from kwizart repository (x86 and x86_64) do su - rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm rpm -ivh http://rpms.kwizart.net/kwizart-release-9.rpm yum install cinelerra --enablerepo=kwizart Tips: 1 - This package tweaks the kernel.shmmax value in /etc/sysctl.conf so there is no need for you to modify it. 2 - This version points to the system fonts path in /usr/share/fonts (instead of /usr/lib(64)/cinelerra/fonts). This is needed for the title plugin. It needs fonts.dir (which is usually deprecated) to be regenerated. You can do: yum install ttmkfdir xorg-x11-font-utils and then in each subdirectories of /usr/share/fonts that you want to be seen by the title plugin, so for example: cd /usr/share/fonts/ ttmkfdir && mkfontdir Building Cinelerra (works so far) Downloaded the community code. Ran the configure script. Installed RPM Fusion repo. Livna is has been rolled in to RPM Fusion apparently. Started resolving the missing bits. Had to download fftw-devel, and libmp3lame manually. They were not in the repos. So far, I've only brought up the windows and stopped. That was such a victory, I'm worried about finding the problems with what is left.

Still haven't had the guts to try to Cinelerra software. I'll get to it when I start to feel self-destructive.

I doubt this information will help any one. I just haven't gotten anything to work with this one piece of software without building it from source. Will someone out there please make Cinelerra work or write a better piece of software that works out of the box.

Firearm Inner Workings

This is how they work. That must be a Hollywood revolver because it just magically grows more bullets.

Very Local News

Written 2009-01-09

• Blagojevich is going down. I'm glad to hear it. I've only heard what has made the headlines. I do not know details. Still, this guy is a jerk. I love listening to his speeches where he claims to clean up Illinois politics and then hear the transcripts from some phone calls where he basically says "show me the money". Even though I did not vote for Obama and he is the darling of the liberal media, I'm glad this is not hanging over his had as much as it could have.
  
• Last night, while waiting for Nat to pick me up at the bus stop, I looked over at Alamo Drafthouse sign and wanted to go. Nat and I haven't had a night out in some time.
• Livna Yum repo got swallowed up by RPMFusion . it upsets me that I installed the Livna repo and there was just nothing in it. I had to go research what was wrong to find out that the names had changed.
• China has already passed the U. S. in the number of broadband subscribers. 20% of China broadband subscribers have fiber. 4% of U. S. broadband subscribers have fiber.
• My New Year's resolution this year was not to make any bullshit resolutions that I would just break any way. It may be the second I've ever kept. The first was much more difficult and, in the end, achieved.
• Charlie Brown Christmas first aired in 1965.
• A Christmas Story (You'll shoot your eye out kid.) First aired in 1983.
  
• In the next twenty years, technology will come to reality that allows one person to read another person's thoughts like a book or watching a TV show. It will be done by court order or by hackers. It is already being used by companies for lie detection and marketing research. Google Functional MRI.

This Evening's Inspiration

While Nat watch her Thursday evening shows, I toiled for yet another evening fighting my latest nemesis. I have complained for ages on this blog that I cannot get video editing to work on my computer. at a few minutes past 20:00 on this day I managed to get the last dependency installed. I managed to get the build issues resolved. I gave up on five YUM repositories where legend held that my quarry hid, but did not. I stabbed at the beast's heart one final blow and he relented and ran.

I used every skill I've learned. I used every trick I've learned. I used years of experience to get this ridiculous program to do what it was designed to do. It took me over a week.

The screens came up without errors. I have tried to edit nothing yet. I'm out of gas. I'm calling this one a win and getting a good night's sleep.

Very Local News

• I turn forty in about a month. Yuck. My mom's birthday is right before mine. I have no idea what to do.
• There is a huge number of corporate defaults coming in 2009 according to some annalists.
• There are 800 tunnels in the Gaza strip. 90% of goods in Gaza come through those tunnels. Where does the money come from to pay for these goods? Is anything going the other way?
• Leap seconds are a pain in the ass for IT. The Earth's rotation is slowing down about a second every five hundred days. Then there is the earthquake that kicked off that tidal wave a couple years ago. That affected the Earth's rotation too.
• Last night I lay listening to a science fiction story about modern wireless hacking of video streams between a camera and a young blind girl's brain when I noticed how much my neck and shoulder hurt. I do not know how I pulled something, but I have. What did I just say about turning 40? I'm forgetful too. Great.
• Universities should be ranked based on how well people do five, ten, twenty years after they graduate. There probably is a ranking of this. I haven't dug in to it.

System Crash (again)

It turns out that installing the ATI drivers on my Fedora 10 box was a huge mistake. Things seemed to work, but when the screen saver locked the desktop, it never came back. Even after removing the driver and trying to set things back under X, it was still broken. Now, I know that X problems like this are just chronic. Once they start things just get worse. There is no fixing things.

So, I reformatted the drive and started over again.

You know, Fedora is really starting to remind me of Windows 95. One thing goes wrong and the only way to get back to a stable system is to reinstall the OS. Yup, Windows.

I did something different this time. I didn't bother backing anything up. There was ample opportunity. I didn't save any of my podcast settings. didn't save any blog stuff, or documents. I have that information in Google Docs. The only thing I really just didn't bother with was the one video I shot of the racers. It is gone. I just don't care enough to hang on to it.

If I had a Ubuntu DVD on hand, I would have loaded it. it would have been the last straw for Fedora for the time being. I'm just that fed up with it.

Another symptom was a lost of synchronization for terminals. That is, I couldn't get to the terminal by hitting ctrl-alt-f1 or any other function key. What would have fixed this was hooking up the analogue monitor cable. I believe that is what was going on. The ATI driver was giving up the digital connection when heading for the tty connections.

Fedora 10 doesn't come up to the screen that lets you select which kernel you want. This prevents you from booting to single user without booting from the Fedora 10 CD, select the recovery option, let the nearly useless console load up and manually edit the grub.conf file for this end.

I would love to use Knoppix for editing the grub file, but Knoppix does not mount the virtual disk file system what ever the hell Fedora calls it. you have to jump through even more loops to get that to work. I'm telling you Shit is falling apart around my ears. Did I already mention Windows 95?

I dread the Linux registry. Coming to a box near me any day. AAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

At work I fixed a problem with Java running in Firefox on Red Hat Enterprise 5.2. The trouble is one of the components of Java no longer works in Firefox with version 3.0. We use that bit so I played with a couple of programs that let you use old plugins with new browsers. That didn't work. I then tried to use the 32 bit version of Firefox on a 64 bit system. That worked, but now plugin. I ended up just instilling an old version of Firefox 2.0 on the system in a local folder and pointing that to the old plugin. That worked, but kind of sucks. They are working on updating the mechanism.

At work, I also fought a stupid situation for over an hour on a couple machines. The situation was trying to mount a device through the old serial port from a server. I messed with it and messed with it. I used a null modem. I used a serial cable. Nothing let me connect. Then I tried a completely different kind of server across the rack. That worked. It turns out the serial ports are all crazy on the servers on that rack. They are configured as port 24 or something instead of 1 or 2. Still, managed to get attached, but it ended up taking far too long. I felt like an idiot.

At work, I swapped out hardware in a couple of 2003 servers and installed the OS. Every driver is trying to bite me in the ass. Every time Windows can make a wrong turn, it does just to get at me. I'll get them up tomorrow, with all the hardware they need. Or else.

Day's summery

Brand new pants, ruined. I give up. I'm going to bed.

More on video

I came home this evening and downloaded Ubuntu. I installed it and it worked on the first try. It only made me cuss once. Right now I'm still using VMWare which will drastically reduce the performance of the video editing software. I'm not worried. If this works well, I may switch to Ubuntu. I'm kind of fed up with Fedora anyway. Isn't that nice? I mean to get fed up with one operating system and to be able to try another.

I did some more reading on Cinelarra's site and found out Knoppix and some other live CDs have one form of Cinelarra or another on their distributions. This might save me some trouble. Sometime this week I'll get through the testing of this ridiculous software on at least one platform. You know, for as much as people tout the graces of Cinelarra on Linux, I've had the hardest time making it work.

Once something works, I'll have this thing licked. I can start producing videos that don't suck. Well, I won't go that far. I'll be able to produce videos. We will leave it at that. I'm not giving up. Not right away. Not all at once. I get discouraged and take breaks. Then I trudge forth.

Have you seen some of the crap on YouTube? This video editing thing is so easy on Macs and Windows PCs that these idiots can produce something that gets their name all over the internet. Sometimes in a bad way. I'm thinking the star wars boy. That was unpleasant for him. Ther needs to be a YouTube channel "What ever happened to What's his name?"

Oh, I forgot to mention that Kino ran for 24 hours and still hadn't imported an 18 minute video. I have no idea if there was a week to go or five minutes. Useless.

With no combination of settings or video could I get avideumx to work properly without separating the mp4 audio from the video. Useless.

Might as well try a new video driver while I'm at it.

I like a good take down

I used to watch Cops for this sort of thing. The best part is that the assholes got caught.

People Suck

I've said it before. Earth would be a great place if it weren't for all the people.

Very Local news

• That first date was hard to write this morning. 2008 just kind of rolls off my keyboard.
• I walked in this morning and it felt like old times. I bundled up and was hot. I had to unbundle half way to the bus stop. The sidewalk in front of the new apartment complex is not done yet so I'm still taking the long wrought. the number of people on the bus was light.
  
• Recession resistant careers
  
• debt collectors
• shoe repair
• I had one of the busiest days at work since I've worked here. Felt kind of good.
• Got home at 19:22. Ate something. Went straight to trying to get Ubuntu to work to try Cinelarra.

Hamas Personnel Carrier

So, what is in the back of that ambulance coming down the street? Remember the first Die Hard where the planned escape vehicle was an ambulance? Watch the whole video and read what is written on the side of the white van all the guys with guns use to travel.

Is there a UN presents in Gaza?

Video Tests (updated)

Started Kino import at 16:25 2009-01-04. I predict 16 hours time to import. I'm pulling that number out of my ear. There is no progress bar in Kino during import. Kino insists on only editing MPEG format and converting everything to its favourite flavour of MPEG in order to edit. During export, I'll loose all the resolution I've shot. If memory serves, only old TV formats are supported in Kino for export.

This is really not going to work. I'm in trouble. I do not know what to do.

Update

Downloading Ubuntu because there is a group of people who keep at least one version of Cinelerra running on that platform. This doesn't mean anything will work. It will be some time before I get to a point I can test because I have to download and install a virtual machine that contains Ubuntu. That will take a while and some effort. Then I must figure out how to get Cinelerra running because it is not the turn-key kind of operation. 

I've used Cinelerra before and it does work when you know what you want. The interface is nearly unusable. It is slow and buggy. Half the things you click on simply make it go away and you have to start over again. Add this on top of a virtual machine quarks and I feel I'm doomed before I begin.

God help me.

Houston Street Racing Video

Racers. I shot a video of the racers and called the cops. I would put the video up, but it is too big to load raw and when I edit it, thesound is off. I uploaded it last night and the sound was still off on the YouTube version so I removed it. it sucked anyway. I have to figure out how to get the sound to match the video or there is no reason to bother with the video.

This may be something I just can't do in Linux. I mean, if the software can't keep the sound in line with the video, what use is it?

Carrier Landing in a Turboprop

I wish there were more videos like this. Just aim the camera out the window and do something cool like land a turboprop craft on an aircraft carrier. This pilot made it look easy.

My grandfather landed Corsairs on World War II era aircraft carriers. He told me that you didn't see the deck at the last second. You had to nose up and that thing is all nose. The reason the wings are swept down like that was to keep the enormous prop off the ground.

In the Name of the King

Stunk.

A king with sons who will take is place. The sons who grow to men away. An enemy comes to the world in the form of daemons. The modern world cannot present an enemy worth fighting that is made from men. It is politically correct and sickening. It should be the Saxons or something. I do not know my Briton history. What minority group should it be that fights this king? I suppose they have magic so they can have an enemy that offends none. That's magic. 

I liked the tree climbing scout ninja guys. They kicked ass. The rest of the movie was crap.

The New Doctor Who

I don't like him. He looks like a Goth sixteen year old to me. Do you have any idea how old that makes me feel? He was born in 1982 for God's sake.

Matt Smith Matt Smith .

He is quaky and gangly. That seems to be what it takes these days. I hope there are no Jim Carry types in the future.

Insane

How do you find out your are any good at this sort of thing? I tried to look up who Robby Madison is, but only got videos of him doing jumps. Ninety bazillion hits of the same five or six videos. No information. No Wikipedia page that I could find that wasn't someone else. Never mind. Cool stunt none the less.

I'm really late to this game because my dad just sent me a link to the YouTube video. Oh, well. Better late than never.

Vanishing Point

I watched Vanishing Point again. I hadn't seen it since I was a kind. Several movies and TV shows have made reference to it. There is even a couple guys doing some kind of race thing around America in a brand new White Challenger in costume. They could spend their time and discretionary income helping homeless children, but screw that.

Vanishing Point is where the Dodge Challenger really made it's bones in the moves. Bullet came earlier, but the Dodge Charger was not the star. Ever since Death Proof, I've wanted to watch it again.

I don't think I've ever sat in a Challenger. I ought some rides in a friend's Duster a couple times. That was a slant six.

Simple Rally

No music. No sound effects. No crashes (well, one fender bender). Just straight up rally. This is one thing they have in Europe that I envy. I think the U. S. would benefit greatly from organized amateur rally. Give people an excuse to soup up an old jalopy and make them sign every waver in the world. Turn them loose on some back roads away from every one and let people get their aggression out. Sure there would be problems, but deal with them as they come up.

... More.

Inflation Calculator

Pretty cool. It pains me to know that $100 in 1933 is worth about $1600 or more in 2008 dollars. Give it a shot yourself.

Put an Inflation Calculator on your site!

Found Here

Pretty good idea

This is a predator camouflage shield thing. The presenter is kind of a dork, but I think it is a good idea. I wonder if it is original.

... "mirror camouflage", nothing. "reflective camouflage", nothing. "mirror blind", got some hits, but nothing solid.

I'm impressed. I love it when something simple works well. You have to be on your toes about the angle of the sun and such. I would like s well sighted person to 'see' this thing in action in real life, not on a cruddy online video. Still. Sounds usable.

Sam's Club on Friday Afternoon

We all woke up before noon. After being off for over a week, this is note worthy. We piled in the Corolla and headed to Sam's Club.

Nat's recent surgery means she gets to supervise. It amazes me how much better both Nat and I pack the cart than the people checking us out. We nearly needed two carts. Our cost was below $300 this time including gas. Not too shabby.

We stopped at McDonald's on the way home just in time for late lunch rush. They still had the breakfast menu up and people were bailing out of line. I got a salad. We had to get the lady to repeat what she was saying because the microphone was not a good enough fashion accessory to keep close to her mouth.

We spent less money because we just said no to many not absolutely needed items.

I did almost take the video camera, but I thought it would be too much of a distraction. Besides, I would have filmed us bickering. That makes for bad TV.

Figured the damn video thing out

For a minute there, I thought I might have to give up. Then, I read the instructions. I finally got the following very helpful error message.

************************************************            **** Your system is too SLOW to play this!  ****            ************************************************ Possible reasons, problems, workarounds: - Most common: broken/buggy _audio_ driver   - Try -ao sdl or use the OSS emulation of ALSA.   - Experiment with different values for -autosync, 30 is a good start. - Slow video output   - Try a different -vo driver (-vo help for a list) or try -framedrop! - Slow CPU   - Don't try to play a big DVD/DivX on a slow CPU! Try some of the lavdopts,     e.g. -vfm ffmpeg -lavdopts lowres=1:fast:skiploopfilter=all. - Broken file   - Try various combinations of -nobps -ni -forceidx -mc 0. - Slow media (NFS/SMB mounts, DVD, VCD etc)   - Try -cache 8192. - Are you using -cache to play a non-interleaved AVI file?   - Try -nocache. Read DOCS/HTML/en/video.html for tuning/speedup tips. If none of this helps you, read DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports.html. A:  16.6 V:  16.6 A-V: -0.002 ct: -0.007   0/  0 55% 10%  0.9% 147 0                                                                 Exiting... (Quit)

Don't sugar coat it or anything. Just come right out and tell me my computer is slow. I can take it. The highlighted one is the one that worked.

This fixes the player. The editor will not play full speed. Hopefully I can get around that by creatively editing things. I'll just have to be on my toes when it comes to snipping. I may have to get one of those clicker things that tell me what scene I'm on. That would be funny. Using a half pound camera and a five pound snapper-thing.

The highlighted setting above causes the start of the video to stumble.The player catches up and the rest of the video is in sync. The first five seconds or so is a bit haywire.  I can live with that.

So, expect a video blog, right. No. I'm not nearly that industrious. Expect a couple videos now and again, when I get round to it. For some reason I want to video my commute to and front work. I might do that. Then they will come trickling in.