Illustrator

A very cool illustrator; Esther

Video conversion

I recently inherited a T-Mobile Shadow (aka HTC Phoebus). It's a pretty sharp little device. I haven't had any of the problems people complain about on the interwebs. It's a little quirky, but I like it.

Windows mobile 6 is an interesting animal, settings are all over the place. I'm actually slightly amazed I have it working, MS Exchange Syncing and everything.

Putting video on it has been pretty easy, I spent some time tweaking but it looks pretty good right now. I used Handbrake to turn some avi files into m4v files.

Turns out the frogs that code Handbrake are real jerks. Every other video processor allows you to select multiple files to encode. An entire directory perhaps. Not Handbrake. Oh no. Those frenchies don't want you to. Check this out:

Turns out a freedom loving individual out there has an answer: the Handbrakebatchencoder. I feel like I'm in Sweden or something. There are very long words in Sweden.
Check it out: http://handbrakebatchencode.codeplex.com/

This is why those quiche eaters are jerks. Check out how they treat their users in their own forums: http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=7945

That's why I like Media Portal. The forums are a gentrified place of refined discussion. A place where developers don't eat crepes and mock their users.

Ok, back on topic.

1. Download and install Handbrake regular, the GUI edition (this and #2 are here)
2. Download Handbrake Command Line Interface edition. Unzip it to here: "C:\Program Files\HandBrakeCLI\HandBrakeCLI.exe"
3. Download and unzip the Handbrakebatchencoder, set aside
4. Get Handbrake to show it's query. Go to Tools>Options>Advanced and "Enable Query Editor"
5. Trial and error your way to getting video the way you want it. Dial it in.

Now you're ready for a batch encode. Open up the batchencoder .exe. Make sure your paths are going to the right place and paste in the query from Handbrake GUI, making sure you're putting it in there right. There's an example preloaded to get you started.

Here's the query I'm running.

-t 1 -c 1 -f mp4 -w 320 -l 240 -e ffmpeg -b 140 -r 15 -a 1 -E faac -6 dpl2 -R 48 -B 160 -D 0.0 -v 1

Details
320 x 240
MP4
No Filters
MPEG-4
15 Frames Per Second
140k Average Bit Rate
128 Bit Rate Audio

The video looks good. You can try a higher video bit rate if you'd like, it might make it look a little better but might glitch. The 200 Mhz processor in the Shadow isn't a blockbuster these days.

Chicago RedEye (it's a newspaper)

This is my favorite article from my favorite RedEye writer, entitled Hotdogocalypse.

Legos

Here's a great Lego blog: http://microbricks.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

The micro ones are cool.

Comskip update

So, after a whole lot of run around trying to get Comskip to stop crashing my HTPC, I figured it out. For an unknown reason it was crashing my ATI H.264 codec. Who knows why. So I switched it over to Divx and all is well.

Unfortunatly it took a couple unnecessary trial and errors to figure out. To aid future debugging:

When things go wrong try these before uninstalling and reinstalling Media Portal:

1. Uninstall and reinstall Divx
2. Uninstall and reinstall video drivers
3. Change video/audio codecs in MediaPortal
4. Make sure there is still enough disk space to record video
5. Swap out hard drives to the other bootable disk and try it any fixes on that drive first!

Dear mp3 player manufactures

Yes, I'm looking at you Apple. What's the deal? Why are mp3 players still so piddley? I can install 8GB in my four year old phone!

People must buy more new music if they can only put a couple tiny tunes on their player.

Almost $200 for 8GB. Really?

How about 2TB for $159.99!

Sure, sure solid state is more expensive than a spinning drive. But you can buy 64GB of SSD for under $145!