In the Jukebox: R.E.M.
Five minutes of R.E.M.: The Great Beyond
Five minutes of R.E.M.: The Great Beyond
Now that I have burned my first DVD with material we recorded last summer, I want to show it to our friends and family.
But I notice a great difference between the people here and in Holland. All our family and friends here have a DVD player. Videotape is dead; DVD is the current device to use. It is almost impossible to rent a recent movie on tape. However, none of the Dutch people I have recently spoken have a DVD player! This includes my parents and my sister, probably the persons that are the most interested in our recordings.
This weekend I will have to spend some time to copy the DVD contents to tape, so I will be able to show them our adventures in Thailand when we visit them in November.
I am wondering whether Spain really is more technically advanced than the Netherlands (who would have expected that?), whether my friends and family here are more gadget freaks than the people we know in the north of Europe, or whether I simply did not speak to the right people in the Netherlands. Do you have a DVD player?
I just installed the latest version (1.32) of the MTSimpleComments plugin, but receive the following error when scheduled posts are being built:
Undefined subroutine MTPlugins::simplecomments::SimpleCommentCount
at lib/MT/Builder.pm line 139
The strange thing is that all files, both from index templates as archive templates, are created correctly, except for the main index.
Today I ran across three situations related to censorship. They are not related to each other, but the coincidence struck me.
First, I found out that my hosting provider bloghosts closed their support forum. Bloghosts gives excellent service and support and I recommend them to everybody looking for a reliable hosting provider. A few weeks ago they had some internal technical problems with their servers, resulting in lost support tickets. While normally support tickets were answered within a few hours, in that period tickets got lost and were not answered. To get the attention of the support staff, some customers started complaining in the support forum. Since normally this forum is very, very quiet, about one post a day, these few people completely took over the forum. The forum is now closed…
Directly after that, I read the comments on Robert Scoble’s Are you afraid to blog?, which suffer from a troll called J.Toran. Some commenters requested Robert to remove these comments, but until now they are still there and I expect them to stay there.
And finally D. Keith Robinson wrote about Comment Moderation and Censorship after having to remove a whole thread.
As for censorship on this site, until now I only removed commercial comments (spam), but I reserve the right to moderate comments in some other situations as well, as is explained in the Comment posting policy of this site.
Movable Type version 3.12 was released today, and as usual I immediately installed it. The feature I wanted was the promised fasted build times, but I also encountered some undocumented new buttons in the edit screen:
I uploaded the image above using the Upload File button, but was a little bit disappointed that this feature did not copy the corresponding <img /> element into my entry. Shall I wait for version 3.13?
In the pas years I have written 375 entries, linkdump excluded, for this site, of which only 21, 6%, are related to my professional life. Does that mean that nothing interesting is happening during the hours I spend in the office? Does that mean I am not enthusiastic about my job?
Of course not. I don’t write about my job because I don’t know how my colleagues are going to react. The things happening here simply don’t pass to my personal filter; the same filter that blocks all subjects that are too personal.
Lately I have been thinking about writing more about my job, since we are doing very interesting things, and I don’t know anybody else writing about POS software, warehouse software and financial software. I thought about mentioning the idea to my colleagues before I start writing more, but is that really necessary???
I am clearly not the only person having these thoughts, and today Robert Scoble tried to convince all of us to not be afraid to blog. He is absolutely right, corporate blogging can give another face to your company. I’ll have to think it over a little bit more, and maybe soon you will find more news about ICG software on this site. If that would happen, Robert Scoble can be satisfied about his work.
One month after buying the Pinnacle Studio software, I have finished my first DVD project. The update to version 9.1.2 solved my problems. Now that the work is done, is is time to complain to Pinnacle, since they sold me a broken product while they already had the newer version for three months.
I just looked into the log files, and found out that people got blocked for trying to open old MP3 files from the jukebox.
The jukebox is supposed to handle all requests for MP3 files on Brain Tags. If the requested file exists and the time-out period has not passed yet, the file is served; in all other occasions a list of currently available files is presented.
However, after forwarding MP3 requests to the jukebox, all requests for old MP3 files got redirected to my spamtrap, effectively blocking visitors looking for MP3 files. Of course, I immediately fixed the problem.
The latest CD I bought is “The Sound of Science” from the Beastie Boys. I was thinking of ripping a song and putting it in the Jukebox, when I saw that Lijn had put them in her jukebox. A download and an upload later, Intergalactic is available.
Another one for the jukebox: Satisfied from Bettie Serveert, a dark track with lyrics like, Callous on the soul/ There’s a tale untold/ About how you spend your life/ In a place where no one goes. I like this track a lot, and used it for the DVD about our holiday in Thailand that I am still trying to render.
After CasaSpider and Dudesh Ramadhin.
After all problems I encountered last week, I laid my little video project to rest for a while. Until yesterday; when I felt the itch of an unfinished project. In the mean time I found on the internet how to get around the rendering problem: I simply created another project that contained the problematic scene plus some footage before and after, rendered it to an AVI file, and included this file in my project. A few hours of rendering later I had my DVD!
Happily I inserted the precious disk into our DVD player to admire the result. But… all sound editing, sound levels and background music, I had done in the project had disappeared and in some scenes the sound was out of sync. Once again I was very disappointed! :-(
I got back on the internet, and search the Pinnacle support forums. There was a huge thread about this problem, which lead me to the FAQ. I have to update my software to version 9.0.8 to fix this problem. On the download page I found a huge patch (46 Mb) to update to version 9.1.2. What bothered me most is that this fix is from June, while I purchased the software in September. They simply sold me a defect product, while they had already solved these problems!
I am downloading the patch now, and this afternoon I will buy a DVD+RW disk to try to burn my project again.
Just a few weeks after Microsoft acquired LookOut to provide advanced search for Outlook, Google released Google Desktop Search. LookOut is mainly focused on OutLook, but also does a little bit with other files, while Google focuses on Office files and also does Outlook.
At the moment I have both tools installed, to see which one I prefer. Of course I expect Google to expand their application very soon, while an upgrade from Microsoft might take a while.
To get you all through the weekend, I placed some Dutch punk rock in the jukebox: We’re All Fucked Up from De Heideroosjes. Enjoy it!
The PalmOne Zire 31 comes with a SD slot and a default, small, card of 16 Mb. It's basic use is to put MP3 songs on it, to be played with the RealOne player. Putting files on the SD card is very easy; you only have to drag the file to the QuickInstall icon, and the next time you synchronise it will put the file on the card.
However, you can only access the file from the Palm, there is no way to copy it back to a PC. I would like such a function, to keep some important documents with me, which I can access from any PC.
Therefore I was really happy when I found Card Export II. This little application emulates a USB mass storage device on the Palm, so you can access it as a flash drive. But after installing it, I received an error message when connecting to my PC: Cannot open USB port 0307. I e-mailed the Softick support department, and two days later they presented a new version, which also works on the PalmOne Zire 31. Great!
Nick Bradbury likes them, so I put Green Day in the jukebox. For your ears only: Extraordinary Girl. As usual, you have 4 days to listen.
The Dooie Donders Club is an infamous club in Harmelen, formed by four self proclaimed brothers. Until some years ago, they had a nice web site with plastic ducks and other toys as decoration. I made this site using Microsoft Frontpage, and maintained it for some years. It contained stories about the activities of this club, which had its highlight in 2000, with an appearance in the Dutch men magazine the Panorama and the production of their CD Dagobert, de heerser hier. Shortly after, the site disappeared, and the club became dormant.
Last week I accidentally found the text published in the Panorama, and thought that it was a pity that the history of the DDC is not available on the internet. But wait, maybe the Internet Archive Wayback Machine has saved something of that site. Indeed, it was all there. I quickly installed Mambo Open Source on my server, created a new subdomain, configured Mambo and copied the texts into new entries. And there it is: the DDC is back!!!
At the moment is a pretty default Mambo site, but I plan to make some custom templates to give the site some Dooie Donders sauce.
The past few weeks I have been working myself into a completely new world: video editing. It all started with the camera we received this spring. Of course we took it with us on holidays, and back home we wondered what to do with the tapes. They contained some nice material, but also a lot of ‘crap’ produced when trying out the functions of the camera. I wanted to edit the video, and copy the result to a DVD for easy play back.
So I installed the tools that came with the camera on my PC, and connected it to an USB port, only to find out that the software is useless and that USB only supports low quality video. After looking around on the internet a little bit I ordered Pinnacle Studio DV, a software suit that comes with a FireWire (IEEE-1394) PCI-card.
After installing the card, I set to work: I copied the tapes to my hard disk, and selected the scenes to be included. I made some dark scenes a little bit lighter, and adjusted the audio levels. After adding some smooth transitions and background music my video was ready for DVD. I set my PC to render for a few hours, and the next morning I had… an error message! I figured that it must be a full disk, so I cleaned up the disk and set it to render again. The next morning, I found the same error at the exactly same scene; a photo I included in the video.
After a little bit looking around, I found a log file, giving me a more detailed error message: Max Video Bitrate:8494000 for disc output. Mmmm. bit rate, that must have something to do with data throughput. Since the problem appeared in a photo, I decided to increase the JPG compression of the file and give it another try. Half a day later I found the same rendering error again. I was getting frustrated, and started to search on the internet, without results. Then I looked in the configuration of Pinnacle Studio, and saw that you could configure the bit rate for DVDs. It was set at automatically, which gave me 60 minutes of video per DVD. Since the error message mentioned a bit rate a little bit above 8Mb, I fixed the bit rate to 8Mb, and let my PC work again… with the same result as before. Now, I lowered it to 7Mb, and pushed the Create button again. In a few hours I will know whether that has solved the problem, but I have a bad feeling about it…
[Update 2004.10.06]: I was right, the error is still there. I did a short test with a project containing only the photos involved, and it rendered correctly. It’s time to see how good the support department of Pinnacle is.
There is new music available in the jukebox: Allermooiste Fout from Poels & Giessen. You have 96 hours to download it. Enjoy it!
Yet another meme. It came here via Realization, Big Pink Cookie and Jay Allen. I have highlighted the items that apply to me.
N.B.: Why am I the first to make this an Ordered List?
The link dump of this site is kaputt. So no new links until I have repaired it. I do not know yet what went wrong, but after removing a test blog I am also missing part of the Links blog.
[2004.10.04]: We’re back to normal again.
I have put some ska in the Jukebox. Smooth swinging horns, velvet vocals, rhythms…
Each morning before I leave home to go to the office, I take some time to see what is happening in the world. A few years ago, I used newspapers, radio or television for that, but nowadays we have internet. While eating a sandwich and drinking my coffee, I check my e-mail and scan the headlines of about 200 web sites. If I see something interesting, I read it or bookmark it to be read later.
This whole process takes me 20 minutes, thanks to my newsreader which fetches all information from those 200 sites and presents it to me in an easy digestible way.
However, this list of sites I want to keep up with is growing steadily; each week I discover new interesting sites, and add them to my list. When I finished browsing to my list today, I had to run to the office. I guess I’ll have to adjust my alarm with 10 minutes to give me the time to read my news.
Just before starting to write all this down, I read that Robert Scoble has exactly the same problem, but worse. He currently checks 915 feeds, and in his entry Dealing with the information flow he wonders how scalable feed are, as more and more resources use them. What happens if the number of feeds grows up to 10.000?
I guess what is going to happen is the same as happened to the web. Ten years ago I scanned the NCSA What is new? list. First I looked at this list every week, but soon new sites appeared by thousands, and I left this method to keep up with new sites. Nowadays I use search engines. They are not the same, and don’t give met the same feeling, but they scale better. With feeds the same thing is happening: at this moment I follow everything published on some sites, but soon I will have to fall back on PubSub to find what I want. I propose they will build some randomness in their queries, so I can still discover some unknown sites, and don’t have the feeling that I am reading the same as everybody else.
When I read about the Jukebox that Lijn created, I got this feeling inside…
I copied the two files to my server, made some changes to the configuration, and there it is: the Brain Tags Jukebox!!!
It needs a little bit of decoration, but the functionality is there. All songs will stay available for 96 hours, after which they will automagically disappear.
At this moment you can find You Learn About It from The Gathering, and of course the wildly popular new song from the Pixies Ain’t That Pretty At All.
Happy downloading!
[Update 2004.09.24] I added some echo statements to the PHP code, and the results looks a lot better. It is also valid XHTML now.
[Update 2006.11.9] More than two years later, the jukebox became obsolete and has been removed from this site.
Besides collecting spam, I can also use my GMail account to invite others to use this service. If anybody still doesn’t have a GMail account and wished to have one, leave your full name and current e-mail address —which won’t be shown— in a comment.