I got an invite to a group with a less dubious name than some of the other "OMG! I WAN TEH OLDBOOK BAK!" groups, but with an intriguing twist, it claims to be created by Zuckerberg himself.( Hit me up after the jump if you want my opinion on this ) Things change, get used to it. Remember the uproar when Apps were introduced? Remember the near-riots when the Mini-Feed was introduced? Did they go away? Don't we now consider them near-vital parts of the Facebook we know and love? And in all honestly, Facebook is not like America, so the phrase "love it or leave it" has never been more applicable. There are plenty of other social networking sites out there, and if none fit the bill, make your own! Hell, FriendFeed is basically FaceBook, but without everything being forcibly integrated, meta-information (personal information, basically), and apps.

P.S.: please vote on Reddit or Digg it up if you use either service.

NOTE! All images in this posting are hosted by ImageShack. Due to its history of having the ever living bandwidth pounded out of it and forcing the removal of pictures, all images are thumbnailed here with links to the full sized versions. That is all.

So, a few things caught my eye over the past week or so. Mostly, it's common, every-day kind of stuff. Or alternatives to it. OK, there's a not-so-common thing in here too.

Well, first is your average progress bar. You know, they say things like "29 minutes remaining." Well, isn't it kind of annoying when they say "5 minutes left" then it actually takes like three hours? Check this out:

Cute. Cuteness aside, it's a great and efficient program. The program is full of all sorts of tongue-in-cheek bits. If you hover over the "iSquint" logo, a tooltip (those yellow boxes of text) shows up asking "Can you say iSquint? I knew you could." The Help Menu is, well, see for yourself: I personally think it's cute. I could probably spend a year going through all the hidden little things like that in iSquint, but I digress.

Now, there's Google Video. I prefer Google Video for a few reasons. First, it gives me more control over what I can do with my video. Second, it's search function searches Google Video and YouTube's videos. Third, I can actually download videos I like. Anyway, I decided one day I wanted to find a video. Let's say, oh, Thriller. Why not. Well, let's go to Google Video. What's this?

I really have no clue how all this Super Mario 64 stuff ended up in my recommended videos. I don't search for lots of Mario 64 stuff, and I don't get tons of mail in my GMail account on it either. I'll understand MacFUSE, but it's been in there for ages. But look at the popular videos. Remember: Google Video aggregates YouTube content too. People who are convinced that GooTube is going to take over conventional TV are nuts. The Blog Buzz (mostly stuff people used the Blog It! button for) shows clear signs of lunacy. But let's ignore that and actually search for our music video. You'll note that none of that is Michael Jackson's Thriller. I found MJ's song half way down the second page. First time I searched for it, I found it on the seventh page. Here's what I got: So, Google wants me to pay $1.99 to buy the video so all I can do with it is watch it in my web browser? Well, I suppose I have the convenience of being able to watch the video on any computer with a web browser and a keyboard, but I'm also paying $1.99 to watch the video encoded in H.263 (NOT H.264. H.263 was developed for use with video phones, and was never meant to deliver high quality video, so naturally the images look pretty bad) with 64 KbPS MP3 audio (that's less than half the recommended bitrate). Let's try this one on for size: Well, that's more like it. First result is the video, second result is the song, then everything else. It's almost like they know what I want! Just for the hell of it, I took a preview of the song. That's the FULL resolution of the video. It hasn't been resized, and the image hasn't been recompressed. That's more than twice the resolution of the Google Video version, comes in H.264 (better than your average video off of the Internet's codec), 128 KbPS AAC (better than MP3), and it plays on my iPod. Of course, the drawback is that it won't play on any other computer, but that's the price you pay. Speaking of price, it's the same price as what Google wants. Which would you rather spend money on?

And for the record, I wrote this and had no clue how long it ended up being until I was done with it:

I'd been working on that paper over the entire semester and I had no clue it would end up being that long. I'm actually quite proud of it. I just wanted to show it off. Well, I'm out.

So, ever since I upgraded my MythTV system, it's been a barrage of minor catastrophes. First I lose all my old recordings when I don't transfer the old database properly. No problem. Then my XBox can't communicate with the back-end. After a day of trying to compile a new version of MythTV for my XBox (thinking that the XBox is the problem), I discover that the database software has disabled networking.

Then, all the recordings I thought I had recorded turned out to be static. I spend something like an hour and a half trying to figure out what's wrong with my capture card. Did ComCast fuck up my cable line again? Did I accidentally fry my capture card? Did it confuse the PVR-150 with the crappy capture card I threw in there to try and use as a second capture device? Is my recording cable busted? Then I discover Myth is using the wrong tuning frequencies.

Now, I'm ripping my hair out. Myth says I'm recording one thing on one page, and it isn't on another. It takes me 30-45 minutes to figure out that these phantom recordings are part of MythTV 0.19's new LiveTV handling measures. And that the new recording groups have to do with the handling of LiveTV. Drove me bonkers. I have one thing to say about it:

Oh my God, I hate the new LiveTV recording system.

And thank God I don't watch LiveTV all that much. I think part of the mess has to do with cancelled recordings, and low recording priorities. Probably something to do with LiveTV having a higher priority than my NGE recording settings. At least the damn thing works.

Well, Night all!

So, I'm transcoding this 1080i (High Def, 1920x1080 dots, interlaced) MPEG-2 stream into a 480p (Standard Def, 720x480, progressive) H.264 (Also known as AVC) stream. It takes me two days to get to 26% completed, on a two-pass encode. That means it would have been over twelve days of encoding. Then I notice something so very wrong. The output resolution is wrong. It's set to 1920x1088, not 720x480! Two days of work down the drain.

Christ, what I wouldn't give for a 2.6+ GHz Dual Core processor! Something like the Pentium D 805 (which can be safely overclocked to 4.3 GHz per core! That's a 54% increase in processing power! And electricity consumption). I'd buy one of those things, if only I had a PC to stick it in.

My god, What I Got is !#@$ing WEIRD and ANNOYING to listen to with headphones!

And now for something completely different.

So, I'm walking around the house for some reason today. I think I brought the dog in, or something. I come around the East side of the house (the side facing the street). We don't normally spend a lot of time on that side of the house, mostly because there's about a twenty inch wide swath that you can walk on, unless you feel like galavanting down a hill, on to the side walk or climbing through lilac bushes. Anyway, I'm walking along, and I take in some of the relics, like the old steeple we had on top of the turret, blown off by a storm (and all the corrosion along it helped, I'm sure). I also notice that there are two cable lines running along that side of the house. Now, this is kind of weird, seeing as there is only one cable line on that side of the house that is fed from outside. The only other one is fed from the basement.

What line is being fed? The analog line to the MythTV box. The one ComCast was out here to fix last Tuesday. So why the ¡£™∞! are there two lines running up there? Obviously, one should have been removed. I follow the line. There's one that's attached to the side of the house, partially shielded by all the old ivy (looks like the old line), and there's one just lying on the ground (looks like the new line). This leads me to the infamous splitter box. I've always wondered where it was, now I get a triple treat!

Not only do I have an extra line littering my yard, but I also get to find another cable line, literally lying on the splitter box! Yes, three feet of cable, just sitting there! Hooray! More mess! Just wait, it gets better! The splitter box was left open!

Looking inside, it's nothing but your usual heavy duty cable line, in something of a mess, connected to a pair of splitters. The box seems like it was just busted open too. So, I have regular consumer grade hardware, sitting outside, exposed to the elements. The kind of consumer grade hardware that usually bears the stamp of "for indoor use only." I'm not blaming ComCast for using those parts (can you imagine the millions they have to provide? They'd go bankrupt using anything else) but for not properly covering them, after they're done butchering the line we're paying for.

Holy Christ, this cable line going to the MythTV box has been nothing but trouble! The first tech who looks at it says he'll check it out outside, then leaves. The second tech(s) manages to kill the digital boxes for about a day and a half, leaves a mess, and probably has something to do with the crappy internet.

So, I get to bitch to ComCast again tomorrow. I'm starting to think that this whole Ogilopoly that cable companies have just isn't working out. I've had a nagging theory about it, but I'm pretty sure. This incident has just pushed me over the edge (that critical push from 94.99895% to 95.02%). Maybe if we had open competition, in all regions, we'd have service quality somewhere in the neighborhood of what we see in, oh, I don't know, cell phones? Yes, I bitched about Cingular's tech support, but do you know how often I've had to call them? Twice. Twice in something like... I don't know, six years? I've had to call ComCast something like five times in the past four weeks. And at least Cingular delivers what they promise.

Cingular promises us EV-DO and EDGE/EGPRS networking, video to go, wireless web, text messaging, multimedia messaging, and high signal quality in "more places than ever before." What do I get? EDGE/EGPRS on my cell phone, wireless web, text/multimedia messaging, and high signal quality everywhere but where I work (but all radio signals suck there), Cub and Rainbow (those are two, huge metal boxes. Read: Faraday cages), and the Skerbitz's (their place seems to be a cell phone signal black hole for them too, and they have Verizon. Probably has to do with the house). I don't get video to go or EV-DO because my phone doesn't support it, not because it doesn't exist. If I bought a Motorola Razr, I'd have the freedom to buy a nifty app from Cingular that even gives me live TV from certain television networks.

ComCast promises us blazing fast internet, lots of OnDemand programming, High-Def, and digital voice. My "blazing fast internet" is currently telling me I have to wait thirty five hours, forty seven minutes for the next 29.7 MB of my 33.3 MB download, if I feel like it, I could watch two old MythBusters episodes every five weeks or so (if I'm lucky), and a couple South Park shorts (no full episodes, of course), and from what I've seen of their high-def programming, I'm not too impressed (moderate quality signal, not a ton of high-def channels, not even Universal HD). I haven't heard anyone signing the praises of digital voice, but then again, who goes around shouting about how much they love their phone services (besides VoIP customers, and cell phones don't count).

Christos, save me!

So, ComCast finally fixes the buggy analog line going to my MythTV system. In the process, they manage to disable the line supplying the two digital cable boxes. They fix one line, and break two.

It gets better. They fixed/broke the line today. They can't get here to fix the other two lines until Sunday. Lovely.

So, we've been unable to maintain a stable DNS lock. And ComCast is sending out a tech tomorrow to fix that, and the analog cable line. Finally. And I only had had to call them once! A twenty minute call (Most of that was hold, about six minutes with the person). For once, I have a good tech support experience with ComCast. If only I could say the same things about Palm Inc. and Cingular.

So, today we cleaned the majority of the house. Why? Sunday, it's Ukrainian Easter, and we have an ass load of people joining us. So, we need to clear off a lot of space.

There are two things I've been looking for, for a long time, and neither of them I have found.

First is an envelope of $45 that I had when I was 10. Yes, it's 10 years ago, but, still, I want to know where that damn thing went! Seriously, we took the entire room apart when we remodeled it, and it wasn't there!

The other are my copies of Final Fantasy VIII and IX. They are four disc long games, in double-wide cases, for the PlayStation. And I can't find them! I've turned the freaking house upside down trying to find them. This time, we do a thorough cleaning, and we still can't find them! I suspect that Sara may have left them at her place when she duped them. If that's the case, I might be boned and have to spend the $17 for IX and the $15 for VIII. At least I know where my copies of VII and Tactics are. With VII, Jake has it. And that's a good thing, because Jake takes amazingly good care of his games, even better if they're not his. Tactics we found a few weeks ago in the case for Valkyrie Profile. It's kind of damaged, but not beyond repair. Hopefully, I can resume my saves for those three games before I go to school.

That and my PSP is sometimes annoying me with being unable to access my network (seems to have problems with the WPA-PSK). IVAN SMAAASH!

Yay! I'm 20! And no, I won't buy you booze next year. No I won't buy you smokes this year. This has to be one of the more interesting birthdays in that the least has happened. I didn't know what I wanted for my dinner (I decided on either french toast or waffles, things I haven't had in a long time) or what I wanted for gifts.

The only items I could thing of that I could use would be a big-ass hard disk, maybe a PSP game, or a 512 MB+ MemoryStick Duo. None of them are exactly cheap, and the best way to acquire any of them (except for the game) would be mail-order. The PSP game, I don't know what game I want right now, but I know that once more of my friends own PSPs, we'll probably all want to invest in the same game, so we can all play it multi-player. Like SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo, Coded Arms, or even Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max (what a mouthful!). I hate asking for money, because it's not a very satisfying gift to give, and it sounds kinda lazy. Gift cards are kind of worthless when you don't know what you're investing in (I could buy a hard disk, I could buy a PVR-500 capture card).

Didn't really do much for my birthday, not even my dinner. That's been postponed until Tuesday, when everyone will be here. Things just kind of happened in such a way that not everyone was going to be here tonight, and I work tomorrow. So, Tuesday was decided as the date. Other than that... I've gone to the grocery store, and I might make a run out in a little bit for some rentals.

Other than that, and some nagging annoyances (let's not go there tonight), Otto is giving me some quality companionship (in the ways that only a fuzzy little kitty can). Nothing quite like a small, warm, fuzzy kitty laying with you, letting you idly scratch its head while you watch TV.

In other news, Phil got a PSP yesterday. This means I'm going to have to be his homebrew source, as well as tech support for video conversions. Lucky me. At least Phil isn't the n00b that Gneo can be. Oi, what a fiasco that was. But I was able to prove it only takes five minutes to soft-mod an XBox (additional software requires a little more time, though).

I have twenty five videos I need to burn. They are all part of a story arc, so keeping them in as few parts is preferable. They are all about the same size (350.1 MB). Together, they will not fit into one DVD+R/DL. Neither will they, apparently, fit onto a pair of DVD-Rs.

I would be about 60 MB overboard if I tried to burn one of the two discs with thirteen files. Twelve is fine, thirteen is too much. What was my solution? Convert all the AVI files to Matroska files. This saved me about 3 MB per file. That means I'm only overboard by about 31 MB now, not 60. Most of the people I talk to think that overburning (burning beyond what the disc can officially contain) 31 MB should be safe. Now if only I could get my drive to do it.

I have found a total of one Mac OS X program that supports overburning, it's somewhat sub-par in the interface department, and it doesn't let you overburn more than 20 MB. This is infuriating. So, I guess I have to see if the PC upstairs will let me overburn.

Before you say "Why not put the substantial chunk on a DVD+R/DL, and burn the rest to a DVD-R," I tried that. My XBox doesn't seem to like reading my DVD+R/DL discs. This is starting to seriously piss me off. Well, I'm off to see if Nero Express will overburn for me.