Ravy 2011 Pg 11.

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Fairies are our friends. They are always there in our greatest times of need.

Usually because they caused it.

Runaway Freebies

Last year I saw a movie that I swear I had seen before. So when it came out on DVD I dug up the other movie and decided to do a side-by-side comparison. Of course I must share my incoherent bumblings with all the world. And it turned out to be quite the adventure in using free software.

I needed to rip the movies to my harddrive. I popped the DVDs in and turned on DVD Shrink. In the matter of mere minuets the VOB file was in a useable form on my harddrive. Next up I had to edit the first movie down to the scenes that best make my point. I have Nero, Pinnacle, and Ulead. Instead I went with Windows Live Movie Maker. I had already been using it to edit videos for some time so I was familiar with the interface. It's not as feature rich as all the others, and it is a little unwieldy, but hey, it's free. You get what you pay for, especially from Microsoft. (I think there's universal agreement that it's okay to bash Microsoft.)

Probably the one big disadvantage is that you can only have one instance of Movie Maker open at once. You can import two movies, but at four hours of videos, it's tedious enough with one movie scrolling up and down the screen looking for that one special spot. So it's best to work with one movie at a time and when you're done save it and work on the next video. However, Movie Maker can do frame-by-frame edits, add additional sounds and music, all kinds of transitions, and captions. But, I needed a fade out, and that wasn't there. Seriously, fade ins, but not outs. In terms of audio, You can change the level, which is important because the first movie had a lot of F-Bombs and was much louder than the second.

The next movie was problematic: it wouldn't open up in Movie Maker or play in Media Player. Bummer. Let's try converting them to another format. That brings us to Freemake Video Converter. If you are a serious YouTube user (unlike me) you need Freemake Video Downloader and Freemake Video Converter. Get 'em and install 'em. You won't be sad that you did.

I digress, why download videos from YouTube? One reason I will discuss at some other time, for this article I will say to save something you like in case it is removed. This does happen. The old adage is that it's on the internet forever. Not true. There's a couple of old webcomics I liked that I can't find anymore. I remember hearing a talk show host lament the fact that he couldn't find the video of a politician saying something on YouTube. So when you see something, SAVE IT.

I converted the second movie to WMV and it opened up fine in Movie Maker. I think it worked better in WMV than VOB. Got the pertinent scenes and re-imported the first movie and spliced everything up in a semi-comprehensible order. I thought I was done, you'll know me and so you know I am never done. I needed to record some audio for a colossal flash trickle of a brain storm. Audacity to the rescue.

After spending an additional several hours working on that, I finally loaded it up to YouTube. 

Programs I used:

DVD Shrink

Windows Live Movie Maker

Freemake Video Converter

Audacity

For your bemusement, my masterpiece de resistance. Of course, I fully acknowledge that I am most likely letting my over-reactive imagination trick me into seeing coincidences that just aren't there.

Ravy 2011 Pg 10.

Click Hear Here.

The Fairy Conspiracy.

How could it have ever been 8 to 1 for hatred?

When I look at the make up of the Supreme Court I see some Justices I agree with 90% of the time and Justices I disagree with 90% of the time. I am totally mystified as to how these two groups could possibly come to the conclusion that a bunch of God damned phony Christians can be allowed to do what they do.

Now I could rant all day and well into next year about these people and the Supreme Court on this one.

But, I had a better idea. I went through the rusty old scrap pile of humor on my harddrive and found this gem of a joke. I'll take it and reword it for the times.

Becky and her girlfriend are on the beach applying sunscreen to each other.

(Let me take a minute to enjoy that visual.

........
........

I'm back.)

Where was I? OH-YEAH! Becky and her girlfriend are on the beach applying sunscreen to each other. When at that moment all around loud mouth, desperate for attention, party-pooper extraordinaire: Freddie Felching Phelch Phelps (who cares) comes running over to ruin all our good times.

As the turd of the human race is running, he stubs his toe on an object in the sand. This causes it to come flying out and lands in Becky's bikini-clad lap. She picks it up it and examines what looks like a lamp. You know, the one from every TV show and movie about genies. Then it begins to a rumbling and a shaking. A cloud of smoke erupts from the business end and it forms a beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman dressed as a genie. (Think Barbara Eden.)

"Thanks to this man I have been freed from a thousand year imprisonment. He may have three wishes."

"I WISH..."

"WIAT A MINUTE!!!" Becky interjected. "I"M the one holding the lamp when you came out, don't I get any consideration?"

"You're right, he gets two wishes, and you can have one. Now, sir, what are your wishes?"

"Oh I can't wait." Becky murmured.

"I wish for a 100 foot tall impenetrable wall all the way around my land." Genie crosses her arms, nods her head and a loud 'boing' is heard.

"Done! Your next wish?"

"I wish for all true believers like me to be inside this wall. We will be safe from satan's temptations and when The Rapture happens it will be easy for The Lord to find us." Once again Genie does the voodoo that she do so well and the self-professed reverend disappears.

"Done. Now you wish is..."

"You know, we could just end the bit right here where everybody is happy....... NAAAAAAAA! It's time for me to poop on their party." Becky said. "Genie, I have some questions: this wall describe it to me."

"It's 100 feet tall, 10 feet wide, goes all the way around and nothing can get in or out."

"'...Nothing can get in or out.' Check. Now, every piece of (bleep) that goes around protesting funerals of fallen heroes and little girls shot to death are inside this wall?"

"Yes."

"Genie, I wish for you to FILL IT FULL OF WATER!"

"Done! Well, I guess I should get back in the lamp now."

"No way! Stay out and enjoy some time in the sun. But first, you're looking kind of pale after being in that lamp for so long, you need sunscreen. Me and my girlfriend would be more than happy to help you apply it.

Overcoming XP SP1

Been almost a year since I last said anything poignant about my disadventures in the world on Windows 7. (Okay, since I last said anything about Win 7.) I was mostly waiting for Service Pack 1 to come out. That was ticking me off. I was going to reinstall Windows when SP1 came out. Which was originally October. Then November. December. January. Finally February. I went and reinstalled much earlier because of some crash issues. I thought it was the hard drive, but it turned out to be the power supply.

(I know, it's not really a power supply. That's the outlet in the wall. Everybody calls that big metal brick a power supply, even Leo Laporte.)

What I'm mostly going to focus on is what has changed in my opinion from what I originally scribed about.

First is I switched from using Ultimate 64 to Pro 32. I was still having minor bug issues. Little incompatibilities here and there. It's been an issue forever. Only when all hardware and software manufacturers switch to 64 bit will the problems be solved. I decided that if I didn't like Pro 32 I could easily switch back to Ultimate 64. Other than the fact I had to load up Solitaire separately I've been pretty happy. Most things seem to be working better. Sure I can only use 4GB or ram, but hey, the most graphic intense game I have is Angry Birds. To be quite honest, perhaps the only version of Win 7 needed is Home. Unless you want to use XP Mode.

That's the next one. At first I thought XP Mode was rather useless. Sill is, except I did find one rather interesting use: Test programs I download. Instead of junking up my Win 7 install with trials and errors, use XP Mode. When things get to screwy, just delete the 4kb file in the Virtual Machines folder of your user account and start again.

I had a lot of trouble with Soundblaster. It's gone. One day it quit. I'm sure I'm the reason. The card is good. I tried it in my Linux Test Box and it worked fine. I now use what I term the Soundblaster bypass. I'll talk about it some other time.

Last thing I can think of is that I no Longer use XP Paint. I found out that I can resize the boxes even after I draw them.

That was the last bit holding me up.

In summery: I like Win 7. It's here to stay. In fact I'm at a point now when someone asks for some help with XP, I can only stammer through a response because I can't remember a damn thing about it. Win 7 has totally flushed it out of my brain.