Another threshold crossed! I’ve been ripping DVDs for some time and dumping them onto my iPAQ 1945; trivial (go, mencoder!). And I’ve been using a MythTV box for some time to record the few TV shows that I DO watch; easy.

I can watch Myth’d shows throughout the house: on the TV connected to the MythTV box, my desktop machine, or even my Windows laptop thanks to the various incarnations of mythfrontend. But what I hadn’t gotten around to wiring up was converting Myth’d files to a format that I could put on the iPAQ and view. The MythTV storage type is called NUV, and it’s specific to Myth…as well as much higher quailty (and size) than is needed for the portable player.

nuvexport to the rescue! I’d read about it, but hadn’t pulled the trigger on getting it set up. It’s got some foibles…it’s basically just a perl based wrapper for other transcoding tools, and it sometimes suffers the slings and arrows of changes to those other programs (this thread at mythtv-users saved my bacon when I updated ffmpeg). But with some experimentation, it is working great! Thanks to everyone involved for making such excellent tools. I should have the premiere of Eureka sitting on my iPAQ in about an hour, which makes the chances of me watching it soon much greater! *grin*

Genius: Fun things to do when running an open wireless AP. Also, a great introduction to splitting netblocks to allow varying usage, QoS, etc.

link from reddit

I already use and love Mologogo on a cheap pre-paid Boostmobile phone. Now, I just successfully downloaded Google Mobile Maps (or is it Google Maps Mobile? dunno.) to my work Blackberry. Slick!! It’s a different tool than the mologogo app, since GMM doesn’t use GPS to let me track myself. But it’s the regular Google Maps interface and it’s FAST. Looks great.

I’ll keep both, thank you very much!

Joy! sysinternals comes through again; there’s actually a tool to create symbolic links on Windows! I had no idea. Behold…junction.exe. This made installing Django on my laptop trivial. Thanks to Nathan Colgate for his comment discussing this on the Django Installation page.

(and yes, let’s all hope Microsoft doesn’t ruin sysinternals with their recent purchase of it…)

Well, at this point I had best not complain about lack of entertainment options for a LONG time. After perusing the website for a week or so, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on The Ship; an interesting Hunter-Killer style game set on a series of luxury art-deco style cruise ships. It’s fun stuff, and a welcome tweak to the genre.

And since the download was via Steam, I had several other games to ogle as I paged through the listings, purchase just a click away. I spend Saturday evening looking for an old CD-ROM to re-register a game through the site, and never found it. So I bit the bullet and spent $9.95 on the original Counterstrike! (not CS: Source; it’s probably pushing the limits of my Windows PC, resource wise. Plus it was $10 more, and I’m cheap. *grin*. Maybe later.) And as a bonus, you get the single-player Counterstrike: Condition Zero game as well. Not a bad deal for what I sometimes spend on lunch. And there are TONS and TONS of CS servers out there.

Boy, is Counterstrike bringing back some memories. I was NEVER any good, but I spent quite some time playing CS, I guess back around 2000-2002. It’s quick, easy, and fun. Loving it! So I have plenty to occupy my time. See ya on The Ship, or in CS! Drop me a comment if you want to hook up on a server sometime.

Oh…and does the Team Fortress 2 trailer look AWESOME, or what? Holy Frack. I probably spent even more time playing TFC back in the day. Pyros and Demomen rule!

Another one for my legions of local fans (ok…Lee and Andy); just FYI, I d/l the torrent of Done the Impossible, the fan documentary of the rise and fall (and rise and fall) of Firefly and Serenity. There’s a DVD coming out with much more content, but the producers released the main portion as a torrent. I finished downloading a bit ago; uncompressed, it’s slightly too
big for a CD-R, but I’m compressing it now, and I’ll stick it in my bag, if anyone’s interested.

UPDATE:OK, so I’m a dork. Funny how the video file didn’t…um….compress all that much. *sigh* I hear they do compression INSIDE those things. Fancy that. OK, I’ll have to burn ‘er to a DVD-R; give me the weekend to finish that up. I think I only have 1; I may need to go to Fry’s! (Ah, an excuse. Joy.)

link from P2P Blog

I don’t have a plasma/LCD TV, nor do I plan on having one anytime soon, but I still saw this post referenced by PVRBlog, and thought it was worth throwing up: How to: Wall mounting a LCD or Plasma. Among my LEGIONS of fans, there are several folks with at least one of these things; maybe this will be of use.

link from PVRBlog

Sheesh. Today was flat out bizarre…both in my personal space and in news-land. Personally, the day had it’s weirdness moments throughout, but the topper was when I was out running after I voted. I see this guy with one of those runner’s baby carriages. OK…seen plenty of those. But I’ve NEVER before seen someone let go of it while he’s running downhill! And I mean for 10-15 seconds at a time! Just running along beside it…and yes, there’s a baby in it! What if he stumbles, or the carriage hits a stone, or…whatever. What a bizarre dude! I just stared.

And regarding the news…I mean, what the hell? First off, it’s clear that religious fundamentalists have WAY too much power in our country:

• U.S. Senate Passes Stem Cell Bill (Yay! Uh…psyche. President expected to veto the measure later this week. First veto of presidency, too.)
• 
  U.S. jails British online gambling exec
• Congressman: We Should Prevent Those Who Commit Adultery or Get a Divorce From Running for Office ( And see, I go both ways…this ones a Democrat! From Tennessee, though…shocker!)

*sigh* Aren’t there maybe some more important issues going on, guys? And then, of course, two days of our President bumbling his way through the G8 summit, caught “off guard” in a chat with Blair (while putting down some bread, I tell ya) and attempting to backrub (WTF?) another head of state…some days really are surreal.

UPDATE: good news…Ralph Reed concedes in the GA lieutenant governor race. I DO so love the vote in either primary system we have…I got to play anti-Reed.

• CNN: White House: Detainees entitled to Geneva Convention protections
• BBC: US detainees to get Geneva rights
• FOX News: Pentagon Memo Says Detainees Protected by Geneva Conventions

This is, at least, a start. The prison at Guantanamo Bay is and will be a blight on this nation’s honor, but at the very least we are now acknowledging that certain rights are due the prisoners there. The Administration spins this, of course, as no change; whatever. Listening to US Senators dismiss our obligations under the Geneva Conventions last weekend on Meet The Press sickened me; I’m sure now they’ll be happy to stand up and trumpet this. Again…whatever.

Yahoo! I’m behind the times a bit, but it’s here! Downloading shall commence…