Krunk – Page 83 – Krunk4Ever!

March 14, 2007March 13, 2007

The Number 23

You do know what day it is today right? 3/14 or 3.14, the day of Pi. According to Pi fans to meet March 14 (3.14, get it?), It is about a curious group of people with an almost religious zeal for a mind-numbing string of numbers. Actually one number, made up of a chain that is known — so far — to be more than one trillion digits long. They are the acolytes of the church of pi. And once a year many of them gather to talk about pi, rhapsodize about it, eat pi-themed foods (actual pie, sure, but so much more), have pi recitation contests and, just maybe, feel a little less sheepish about their unusual passion.

Along with that, I’ll found this: The Ten Coolest Numbers (from Digg).

Anyway, I had saw these links after watching The Number 23 with CDMCC. The movie was okay, but I don’t think the movie gave the audience enough clues to figure out the ending, which came pouring out like a fire hydrant once the valve was opened. It’s basically about a man who encounters a book talking about the number 23 and starts seeing similarity in this life and begins to obsess about the number himself.

The Official Site
IMDb: 6.3/10 (6,569 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: C / Yahoo! Users: B-
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 8% / Average Rating: 3.5/10
Apple Trailers
Amazon.com Soundtrack
Amazon.com Showtimes
MY RATING: 6/10

Spoilers: (Show)

March 13, 2007

FFDShow’s XviD Thumbnail Generator Not Working?

For quite some time, FFDShow’s XviD thumbnail generation has stopped working on my main box. I first realized this when I uninstalled the XviD codec because it was crashing explorer whenever it was trying to create thumbnails for what I can only assume to be faulty formatted XviD files. After unistalling the XviD codec, explorer no longer crashed, but it would no longer create thumbnails for XviD files. I thought maybe uninstalling the XviD codec removed something FFDShow installed, so I reinstalled FFDShow, checked the reset all settings box and tried again. I even rebooted my machine just because it said something similar to “To complete the setup, you must restart the computer.” Anyway, XviD thumbnail generation still didn’t come back. I even logged into my administrator account (since I’m running as a non-admin user for my default account) to see if it could be something related to being an administrator. That didn’t fix it either.

I actually resorted back to installing the XviD codec so thumbnail generation would work and avoided directories I knew which would crash on me.

Anyway, after Ryan brought up the issue a few days ago, I decided to to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Once again, I uninstalled the XviD codec and installed the latest FFDShow. And it still didn’t work. I tried forcing FFDShow to decode every codec possible in the list provided. That didn’t work either, which I then reverted.

Finally, I remember these 2 new pages in setup that asked for a whitelist of programs that FFDShow should only be allowed to be used in. I remember, I had to add oblivion.exe and morrowind.exe before to the do not use FFDShow in list. I went into the Video Decoder Configuration and in “Info & Debug”, after the “Don’t use ffdshow in:” line, there was a “Use ffdshow only in:” line. I was like, this wasn’t here before… I check the list and indeed, explorer.exe was not listed in there and the checkbox was enabled. I added “explorer.exe” and guess what… my thumbnail generation for XviD files via FFDShow is working!

Random Crap:

GDC: LittleBigPlanet ‘Full Demo Run’ (from MS newsgroup) – MUST SEE demo of new, amazing PS3 game. I have to say, that game looks rather cool and fun. Not enough to get me to buy a PS3 though. Kudos for those game developers! In the same thread, someone posted La réalité augmentée (Augmenting Reality) which I was totally amazed with what it could do. You have to see their live demonstration. Do note, this is in real time and not post-processed.

Piotr Fox Wysocki – The Artist himself (from Digg) – A very realistic human facial 3d rendering.

Electricman2HS (from Digg) – a very fun stick figure fighting game. Reminds me of Xiao Xiao. I beat all x levels on Easy, but it was an amusing 30 minutes.

Fable 2 Dog Demo (from Digg) – With Fable 2 just around the corner, they’ve introduced a new aspect to the game, which is your dog. Really cool. Reminds me of the level of interactivity with your pet in Nintendogs. The dog’s awfully cute. I wonder if I could choose which breed it is.

Stereo Eclipse (from Digg) – “What an extraordinary view,” says Lika Guhathakurta, STEREO Program Scientist at NASA headquarters. The fantastically-colored star is our own sun as STEREO sees it in four wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light. The black disk is the Moon. “We caught a lunar transit of the sun,” she explains. The stereo eclipse looks like an eye ball that needs some eye drops.

Wonder Woman, Your Car Is Ready… (from Digg) – Computer-generated outline? Nope. It’s real. Dubbed “Modern Japanese Classic,” this 1:1 Subaru Impreza wire frame sculpture is the work of British artist Benedict Radcliffe. Apparently local traffic cops weren’t pleased that the art was parked outside of the gallery on the street, as over the course of a few days, it was issued a few parking tickets! The marilyn-bmw-hood.jpgpiece was recently displayed as part of a larger Radcliffe show at the Paul Smith Gallery in Mayfair last month, and we’re sorry we missed it. I was thinking and thinking… where’s the car? All the images looked like there was a computer outline of a car on them. However, upon closer inspection, that is really a frame and not CG.

Wipe out a single memory (from Digg) – Drug can clear away one fearful memory while leaving another intact. A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact. Neat! This can totally be like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.

Tremendous Symbiosis of Progress and Nature (from Digg) – The Stockholm Metro, or Stockholms tunnelbana, is the metro system in Stockholm, Sweden. The system has three main lines and one hundred stations, 47 of which are subterranean and 53 are aboveground (surface and elevated) stations. This subway station is totally awesome!!!

The Best Auteur You Never Saw (from FuzzyWuzzy) – Svankmajer has spent much of the past 40 years working in the relative cinematic obscurity of Prague, his hometown, where he has handcrafted 32 wondrously bizarre, funny and deeply disturbing films. Though he remains the most anonymous of the world’s essential filmmakers, Svankmajer’s also one of the more influential: Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and David Cronenberg are all students of what might be called the Svankmajer School of the Grotesque. Those moving meat are rather creepy. Interesting film though.

OK kids, colour in a gangsta… (from Angelus) – FURIOUS parents last night demanded that a colouring book for kids showing gun-toting rappers should be taken off the shelves. The 30-page Gangsta Rap book, which has a loaded pistol on its cover, is on sale at Topshop for £6.

The extreme end of stubbornness (from Derek) – Developers came and bought up all the houses around these guys. They refused. The bulldozers came anyways. Apparently the family has government connections, and is not expected to be forced out. According to one of the commenters:

This is in Chongqing, China.

The problem was this. The owner of the house would not leave without getting paid a large sum of money, how much? 20,000,000RMB, that’s about $2mil. No one is living in there, but the owner would not move unless the money is paid. And house owner claims to have connections with the officials, and dares anyone who destroys his house.

http://news.cq.soufun.com/2007-03-11/975176.htm

Throughout IRAN (from Digg) – This is a gallery intended to show views of other side of Iran, different with what you may have seen in the media. And now after about 4 month, this gallery obtains more than 100,000 hits, locates among top popular galleries in 90 days period and the most importantly, attracts attention of those nice people who visits, leaves COMMENT and VOTE; I appreciate all these supports. This encourage me to keep this Gallery live with new views of my country, as long as I can take picture. (12.03.07)
Hope to enjoy it. I have to say, Iran is a lot more beautiful than I had imagined.

Ants test nonviolence of Buddhist monks – Buddhist monks, who are bound by faith to nonviolence, are grappling with how to rid a temple of a severe ant infestation without killing the insects. I think leaving a trail of coke to another temple would work. ;p

March 12, 2007March 11, 2007

New Music

I’ve purchased 2 new tracks from iTunes after I heard them on the radio and really liked the tune. They’ve been played back and forth between one another (50+ times already).

Nelly Furtado – Say It Right (YouTube Music Video)

Lyrics: (from Complete Album Lyrics)

In the day
In the night
Say it all
Say it right
You either got it
Or you don’t
You either stand or you fall
When your will is broken
When it slips from your hand
When there’s no time for joking
There’s a hole in the plan

Oh you don’t mean nothing at all to me
No you don’t mean nothing at all to me
Do you got what it takes to set me free
[ these lyrics found on http://www.completealbumlyrics.com ]
Oh you could mean everything to me

I can’t say that I’m not lost and at fault
I can’t say that I don’t love the light and the dark
I can’t say that I don’t know that I am alive
And all of what I feel I could show
You tonite you tonite

From my hands I could give you
Something that I made
From my mouth I could sing you another brick that I laid
From my body I could show you a place God knows
You should know the space is holy
Do you really want to go?

Rihanna & Sean Paul – Break It Off (YouTube Music Video)

Lyrics: (from eLyrics)

[Sean Paul]
Break It Off
Breakin it off
And settin it off in da real way
Makin da girls dem chill dey mind
Makin dem have a good time
Ya man
SPZ long side RiRi
Come down now Rihanna
Tek it to dem Tek it to dem girl

[Refrain]
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty (most definitely)
Set if off boy
And make me hot all ova my body
(Break it off, take it off, miss take it off) (Break it off tonight) (Yo)
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty (yo, yo)
Set it Off boy (yeah, yeah)
Make me hot all ova my body
Break it off tonight (yo)

[Verse 1]
Struggle and pain wha she fell all de while
And she want a good man to give her de style
Wild child
So she dere pon me file
It’s a long time now me wha plow de sile
Plow de sile meh car run run like de nile
And de most energy meh whan gi her tonight
Give her tonight
Gan make she feel right
Make she fly like a kite that reach a new height
Ah we give it to de gyal dem
Make dem reel up and bawl
And make dem start call
Anytime she want it back she ha fi call Dutty Paul
Admittin it on de spot I know de real Sean Paul
When de traits so great
Cuz she feelin top up and tall wat de ting say

[Refrain]
Break it off boy (immediate if not before)
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty (pumba)
Set if off boy
And make me hot all ova my body
(Break it off, take it off, yo miss take it off) (Break it off tonight) (Yo)
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty (yo, yo)
Set it Off boy (yeah, yeah, yo yo, yo a yo, RiRi, SPZ)
Make me hot all ova my body
Break it off tonight (yo, yo)

[Verse 2]
No doubt
Gyal u shoulda know SP and a scout(?)
Naughty sweat so shout(?)
Make ya bawl out (shout)
Make ya holla me gah give affection in your direction
We go all out
Gyal, just follow we if ya love energy
If ya whan pedigree
Cruise like Penelope
Make a see yuh just bounce wit de Dutty Lee
We keep givin you de Q to de U to de A (yea) to de L to de I to de T to de Y
Girl I got to try (try)
Take yuh booty make you reach to de S.K.Y.
Woman I got to say (say)
Da way u move is makin me hype
Girl cuh yuh know say yuh S to de E to de X to de Y (Pumba Pumba)

[Refrain]
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty (sexiness)
Set it off boy
Make me hot all ova my body (yo, yah go yo, no doubt)
Break it off tonight (yo RiRi)
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty (Blaze up on no rain no stress)
Set it off boy
Make me hot all ova my body
Break it off tonight (yea, yo, ya yo)

[Rihanna]
Boy (Uh huh)
The way you push up on me I
Whan get da roughest wine I dun know ya like (ay, yo, ay)
Fuh sho we gonna break it off tonight (yoga macchugga uh)
Ooooo boy
We really shouldn’t waste no time (sing it)
Come let me back up on ya dancehall’s tight (bring it)
And I’m hopin baby u don’t mind
Cuz I really wanna break it off tonight (instantaneous)

[Refrain]
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty (ay)
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty
Set it off boy
Make me hot all ova my body (baby girl, yo, baby girl)
Break it off tonight (yo give it up give it up sen on)
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty (yo)
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty
Set it off boy
Make me hot all ova my body
Break it off tonight

March 11, 2007

First AdBrite Check

I got my 1st payment from AdBrite to the sum of $15 and change. They’re on a net-60 basis, which I found out meant even if I get $1 on a particular day, it won’t fully qualify to be withdrawn until 60 days later. Anyway, I’m averaging $14 and change for a 30 day period right now and it’s slowly been going up. I was only averaging $12 for a 30 day period just a few weeks ago. Since my hosting costs only $7.95/mo, I’m doing rather well.

I started hosting AdBrite ads about mid November, and given the 60 day wait before I can cash out, I think I’m doing rather well. While I’m not sure how well I would’ve done with Google Ads, I would never have expected to see a check in just a few months. With the minimum of $100 before you can cash out at Google, it’s quite a lot for a small site like mine to accumulate to. At the pace with Google Ads, I was expecting at least 8-9 months before I would see my 1st check.

With AdBrite, I’m not sure what the minimum amount you could specify is, but I currently have it set to mailing me a check whenever I hit over $10 at the end of the month.

March 11, 2007

Daylight Saving Time

It’s that time of year again, but this time, we’re a couple weeks ahead of schedule due to changes in policy. Since it’s Spring, we’re set the clock forward (spring forward, fall back). Both my computer and my Weather Channel radio controlled clock jumped from 2am to 3am.

UserFriendly – Sundial – Suddenly. These are looking pretty fabulous to software maintainers.

Random Crap:

There was another strip from UserFriendly that I found amusing: Cracked Copy of Vista for Cracked Copy of Civilization 4.

RayAlome had sent me a link to the trailer of Paprika. The animation was amazing. I really liked the quote it had near the end:

Evidence that Japanese animators are reaching for the moon, while most of their American counterparts remain stuck in the kiddie sandbox.”

-Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

Stereogram Tut Animated Shark Small (from Digg) – I was just talking to Lisymle the other day about Magic Eye and Stereogram images and she told me she has never gotten a magic eye to work. I tried to show here a few websites and techniques on trying to focus beyond the screen and merge the 2 images, but she hasn’t been able to do it yet. This was the first magic eye in animation that I’ve seen. Pretty neat. See if you can see the shark wiggle.

Big Brother State – An animated short about public surveillance by David Scharf (from Digg) – an interesting film. When I saw it earlier, it was a higher quality version. It appears you can still download the higher quality version off bittorrent or download it from Internet Archive. I do have to disagree with his bit on TC (Trusted Computing). It may be true that TC will warn users about particular software that’s being installed, but I still have final say if something gets installed or not (or at least I hope so).

German man chainsaws house in two in divorce split (from Digg) – A 43-year-old German decided to settle his imminent divorce by chainsawing a family home in two and making off with his half in a forklift truck. Awesome!

Mom accused of driving son to fight boy – The mother of a 13-year-old boy was arrested for allegedly driving her son to a fight with another boy, then cheering him on as he struck his smaller opponent. Police say the mother shouted down another woman who tried to break up the fight across from Sutter Middle School on Monday. A student caught the scene on video.

Hole in pyjamas reveals Internet plagiarism – Candidates for British universities have been caught red-handed copying their applications from the Internet after hundreds mentioned “burning a hole in pyjamas at age eight” on their online entrance forms. The phrase, taken from a Web site which provides examples of personal statements used by successful candidates, describes an early encounter with a chemistry set.

Fans pay to chat with Jackson in Japan – ) – Excited fans got the chance to meet Michael Jackson in Tokyo on Thursday — but only those who could afford to pay 400,000 yen (1,770 pounds) for the privilege.

Animaniacs – Rob Paulson (Yakko) – Nations of the World (from RayAlome) – Here’s a little thing a friend of a f… Here’s a little thing a friend of a friend of mine went to. She saw Rob Paulson who is absolutely awesome! He’s here singing the world song! You can hear her scream her lungs out at the end! Enjoy! =P It’s been so long since I’ve watched this cartoon. Oh what sweet memories.

Beijing’s Olympic Stadium (from Digg) – I’ve got to say, the design is rather cool.

25 UC Berkeley Courses Available via Free Video (from Digg) – Not long ago, we wrote a popular piece about UC-Berkeley’s iTunes initiative which, to sum it up, allows anyone, anywhere, to download complete university courses to their iPods for free. Amazing. Today, we want to point out that Berkeley also makes available full-fledged courses via video/webcast. You can find the complete list of courses here, but below we have listed below 25 courses that figure into a “core” undergraduate curriculum. In short, this list includes many good nuts and bolts courses, which will teach you a lot and, even better, cost you nothing. Each of these courses, coming straight from the classroom, can be accessed with Real Player, and some can also be accessed as MP3s. I remember when I had to go through a whole semester’s worth of these before finals. Or did I…?

March 11, 2007

The Host (괴물)

Just watched this movie tonight with Desperajo, Stanman, and Saran. Really good movie in my opinion. If you had asked me if horror and comedy could ever be mixed, I wouldn’t have known how to answer before watching this. I’ve been hearing than Korean Horror is the new Japanese Horror. Honestly, it’s not really that scary. If I had to give it a scary level, I’d say it’s a little bit more scarier than Jurassic Park. The creature design was definitely interesting and the trailer was somewhat misleading. And the ending… well…

Official Site
IMDb: 7.2/10 (3,133 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: Yahoo! Users: B+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 94% / Average Rating: 7.9/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
MY RATING: 8/10

Spoilers: (Show)

March 10, 2007March 8, 2007

PlayStation Home

PlayStation Home revealed (from MS newsgroup) – Good news for the PlayStation camp, full details of Sony’s PlayStation Home have been revealed, and it ain’t no slacker. Alongside those avatars and achievements we heard about earlier, the “service” seems to be a new-gen Second Life killer, with public hangouts, personal apartments (to show off those fancy prizes you’ve been racking up in recent frag fests) and voice chat. The seeming-MMO even includes casual games such as pool, bowling and arcade machines embedded into the world, but at any time you can invite a fellow resident to join in on any PlayStation Network-capable game. I was pretty amazed at what PlayStation Home was. As a online game match setup mediator, I personally don’t think it works that well, but like Second Life and other MMO (massive multiple player) games, I’ve always considered it as a social chatroom.

Of course, Sony’s going to charge an arm and a leg for this. The joining aspect might be free, but to purchase real estate, to furnish your home, to purchase clothes that match your style, is going to cost you.

I personally am not a big MMO fan as I don’t really see a point in it. It’s like why would I want to furnish a virtual house, when I could be using that money to furnish my real house. But the concept is still pretty cool in my opinion.

They had a small demo where you can play music and everyone that’s around you would be able to listen. That got me thinking. When these people chat, you see dialog boxes like comic strips pop up on top of them. With Xbox Live, practically everyone has a headset/microphone. How cool would it be, instead of chatting, you could hear everyone around you?

Of course, there’s going to be settings you can customize, like if you want to only be able to hear friends or hear everyone around you, how far you want to be able to listen, how far you want your voice to broadcast, if you only want friends or everyone to be able to hear you, etc. For example, I could set that I want to hear everyone around me within a 5ft radius and I want my voice to travel also a 5ft radius, that way everyone that’s within 5ft of me will be able to hear what I’m saying.

If you’re in a park, you’ll hear the birds flutter and chirp, little kids having fun, basically background noise. Then you have your circle of friends and you’re just chatting. The voice will also be directional, so if Tim was on my right, his voice would mostly be coming out from my right speaker. Multiple people can speak at once also so you can really have a conversation going. Hehe. I might’ve taken this tangent a little too far.

Random Crap:

Geometry Wars (from MS newsgroup) is available to be downloaded for the PC. Interestingly enough the game is 61.5MB, a lot bigger than the Xbox Live Arcade counterpart. If you want the full version, it also costs $7.95, about $3 more than what it would could via Xbox Live Arcade (which is 400pts = $5, and if you can get a deal on points, you can get it for cheaper). Geometry Wars is rather fun and it’d be interesting controlling it with the keyboard/mouse. I tend to be more accurate with the keyboard rather than the joystick.

Meat-loving calf eats chickens (from MS newsgroup) – But Ajit Ghosh, the owner of the missing chickens, eventually solved the puzzle when he caught his cow — a sacred animal for the Hindu family — gobbling up several of them at night. … “The local vets said the cow was probably suffering from a disease but others said Lal was a tiger in his previous birth,” Ajit added.

Tofu Thriller Dance (from MS newsgroup) – A pretty cool 3d animation video of Tofu The Vegan Zombie dancing and singing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

aPhone by Microsoft (from MS newsgroup) – a parody of Microsoft coming out with a product to compete against Apple’s iPhone.

japanese 5 year old kid playing ddr! awesome (from MS newsgroup) – founded in the net… awesome 5 year old kid playing ddr!! gotta watch!! he’s so cute playing it XD Ryota’s name reminds me of the shy little boy from At Home Dad. Anyway, this little boy’s amazing on the DDR pad. After he wins, he even goes announce to his mom he got an AA score. Very cute.

RvD2: Ryan vs. Dorkman 2 (from RayAlome) – The hotly-anticipated sequel to the original YouTube phenomenon. Thanks everyone for your support and encouragement. Send this video to all your friends! High-quality version available at stage6.divx.com. YouTube messed up the sound mix so the quality is better all-around on Stage 6. Their light saber battles have always been interesting. You can visit their homepage too. Do be warned, the higher quality version is 430MB.

SinFest – The Next Step in Evolution – the dog and cat are always so cute, but another proof that cats are evil.

Entertainment Savers Guide (from SD) – Register at the SaversGuide for access to hundreds of discounts. Save at restaurants, hotels, retailers, attractions and more! … Your registration is valid for one year. A pretty slick deal. Go and print coupons from the Entertainment booklet for FREE. I was looking at movie tickets and you can pre-order a bunch for $5-6, which is a very good deal.

Illinois Man Fined Thousands And Threatened With Felony Prosecution For Using Untaxed Biodiesel (from Digg) – David Wetzel, a 79 yr old retired chemist from Decatur IL had been using recycled vegetable oil in his 1985 Volkswagen Golf diesel car for 7 years. This January, ” the State of Illinois Dept. of Revenue sent 2 “special agents,” Gary May and John Egan to his house. The two agents threatened the couple with felony charges and asked them to post a $2,500 bond!” Sigh…

March 9, 2007March 8, 2007

Media Control Plugin for Windows Vista Media Center

I was first introduced to this plugin on a MS newsgroup: Media Control Plugin for Windows Vista Media Center. If you have bunch of downloaded or personally encoded videos (dvix, xvid, mkv, ogm, etc), you’ll notice that the FF/RW (fast forward and rewind) buttons on the MCE remote control don’t work. You can use skip forward >| and skip backward |< which is nice and jumps a couple minutes each push, but it’s really not feasible if you want to jump to somewhere deep into the video. If you hold it down, for some reason, it just jumps straight to the end after a few seconds.

Pushing the FF/RW buttons does pop up the seek bar or time line thingy (is there another word for this?), but doesn’t actually fast forward or rewind. A couple people brought this up in the newsgroup and asked for a solution, when someone posted this site: Media Control Plugin for Windows Vista Media Center. This was exactly what I was looking for. It’s features include:

Switching embedded audio and subtitles streams while playing a video: works with AVI, OGM, MKV
Switching between external subtitle files (.SRT, .SUB)
Switching between FFDShow presets (audio & video)
Setting and loading bookmarks inside a video with visualization of the pictures of the saved bookmarks
Real fastforward (and rewind) exactly like in the TV module (with 3 different speeds)
Switching and setting post-processing filters in FFDShow (video filters only)
Separate application to assign keyboard/remote control shortcuts to the commands and the MCML pages of the plugin
Full remote control support (6 buttons are mapped by default, but this can be changed)
Default mapping (works in full screen while watching a video) :
- Fast forward / rewind buttons
- Blue button : loads the startup page of the plugin
- Red button : switches audio stream
- Green button : switches subtitle stream
- Yellow button : switches subtitle file

I had even questioned the newsgroup on how to load subtitles from (.sub or .srt) awhile back and never really got an answer.

This is what you’ll need to install:
FFDShow rev. 935 or higher
Haali Matroska Splitter
Media Control

It notes that you’ll need to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package, but my Vista Ultimate machine appears to either have it already or not need it. I could’ve installed it with one of the many software I installed on the machine, but I didn’t really do much, so I doubt I had installed it without my knowledge. It could’ve came down as an Windows Update.

Anyway, do note that the revision of FFDShow matters. I initially had rev. 610 (the latest stable version available) and was wondering why the heck after installing and configuring exactly as specified, that the FF/RW buttons still didn’t work. Turns out it was indeed the version of FFDShow that I had installed that was the culprit.

After you install the software, the somewhat part that you have to pay attention to is the video and audio decoder configuration. Please follow these instructions exactly. He’s provided a screenshot for each change you need to make/confirm.

After this, my MKV files were being detected as media files in MCE, subtitles were loading and overlayed on top of my videos, and best of all, my FF/RW buttons are now working!

Enjoy!

March 8, 2007

Clothes Dryer Warning

I got this form a MS newsgroup and thought it’d be interesting to share:

I had a wonderful morning – the heating unit went out on my dryer! Why does everything seem to fall apart this time of year!??? The guy that fixes things went in to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. We always clean the lint from the filter after every load of clothes. He told us that he wanted to show us something. He took the filter over to the sink, ran hot water over it. Now, the lint filter is made of a mesh material – I’m sure you know what your dryer’s lint filter looks like.

WELL…..the hot water just sat on top of the mesh!!! It didn’t go through it at all!!! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over the mesh, that’s what burns out the heating unit. You can’t SEE the film, but it’s there. This is also what causes dryer units to catch fire potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time & to keep your electric bill lower is to take that filter out & wash it with hot soapy water & an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that???!!!! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn’t know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I’d share!

Note: I tested my dryer screen by running water on it. The water ran thru a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water & a nylon brush & I had it done in 30 seconds. Then when I rinsed it the water ran right thru the screen! There wasn’t any puddle of water at all! That repairman knew what he was talking about!

Sounds interesting… I for one use fabric softener sheet for every load of clothes I dump into the dryer and this would be helpful to take care of my new dryer.

March 7, 2007January 2, 2008

smartycast

My friend Ryawn imed me today and told me about this new site he’s working on called smartycast. In fact, I’ve actually linked to his site in my friends list for some time, however when I added that link, their site was still just a place holder. He noticed that I had an entry on uTorrent the other day and told me the purpose of his site.

His first tutorial on that site is How To Automatically Download TV Shows. As his disclaimer states: By learning how to download TV shows you’ll also learn a little bit about Bit Torrent in the process. Keep in mind that you may be violating copyright laws and I am not in any way responsible for any trouble that you might get yourself into. With that said, let’s get to work! I also do not endorse any illegal activity that may be “inspired” by my site.

His tutorial shows you step by step on what to download and how to configure the application so downloading TV shows online doesn’t have to be rocket science.

Random Crap:

TMNT Arcade confirmed for release on Xbox Live Arcade (from Digg) – While a release date has not been announced yet (the new movie comes out in March), we do know that Ubisoft is working with Digital Eclipse to port the Heroes in a Half Shell onto XBLA. The finalized title is expected to cost only 400 points, and will include co-op support for up to four players via offline and Xbox Live modes. No word yet if they’re including upgraded support for HD. Sweet! 4 player TMNT here I come!

50 States in 10 Minutes (from Hjo3) – You have 10 Minutes to remember as many of the 50 United States as you can. After 10 Minutes, the correct answers will appear in this space so you can see which ones you’ve missed. I missed 6. (Show). I actually did a lot better than I thought I would.

Biggest Shotgun In The World (from Derek) – This shotgun is so big it takes two men to carry it. I guess its called a punt gun and I cant think of a practical use for it, except to destroy a lot of stuff at once. To me, it’s more like a portable canon. Hehe.

Teenager leaves “deposit” in bank (from Cari) – An 18-year-old man has been detained for repeatedly defecating in front of a cash machine in a bank vestibule in the southern German town of Eggmuehl, police said on Tuesday.

Mario Too – A new Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip that I found rather amusing.

Fat toddlers ‘risk early puberty’ (from Digg) – Girls who are overweight at the age of three risk reaching puberty as early as nine years old, a US study suggests. What about boys?

Great Firewall of China (from NextLust) – Want to see which sites are blocked behind the Great Firewall of China? Just visit this site and pass in your link. Apparently all livejournals are have been block recently. I just tested krunk4ever.com and it appears to be valid within China.

50 Amazing Ads You Haven’t Seen (from Digg) – A set of 50 advertisements that stand out from the rest. Each of these is unique and creative. Collected over a 5 month period. These are rather interesting and funny.

Xbox360 Homebrew in Progress: MAME360, ScummVM (from Digg) – We got this interesting email from a trusted developer that wishes to remain anonymous for now. He has been working on a port of MAME and ScummVM for the Xbox360 for some time now. The development and pictures below are from a devkit, but with the recent Hypervisor Exploit (kernel 4532/4548 only for now) there’s hope you’ll be able to run this on a retail Xbox360 some day. Wow! Speaking of which… maybe I should setup MAME on my Media Center PC, get one of those Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows

I was introduced to Dead Karl on 4chan, but I found a bunch more on this thread: [Animation Gif] Dead Karl. The Chinese name is 史前動物 (史前动物) which translates to Prehistoric Animal. He’s created a bunch of animated gifs which I wanted to share:

Click image to start animation or view it in the gallery.

I do have to warn you, these little animated stories are somewhat gory.

Off-duty Northwest employee charged – An off-duty Northwest Airlines employee was arrested after a woman on a flight from Seattle complained that the man had ejaculated on her.

Dirty car windows become artist’s canvas – Wade, with his scraggly graying hair and a fondness for shirts with wacky prints, doesn’t wash his car when it first develops a fine coating of limestone dust. For the past four years he’s created art on it instead.

The People’s Mario (from Cari) – Based on that silly Rumor saying mario had subliminal communist propaganda. What if Mario was really a Communist? A short flash animation showing you Mario with a hammer killing Goombas and Koopa Troopas backed by Communist music.

First ever HD South Park episode for free on Xbox Live Marketplace (from SD) – This coming Tuesday is a big day for people that are both fans of South Park and Xbox 360 owners. Comedy Central is releasing the first ever high definition episode of South Park on the Xbox Live Marketplace to all members (we’re assuming this means Silver and Gold) for free. That’s right, everyone’s favorite word — free. It will be on Marketplace at that low, low, price of free for two weeks, and will also be available as a free HD-DVD to people buying a new Xbox 360 console or the HD-DVD add-on drive at Best Buy from March 20th through April 3rd.

Discover just updated their list of 5% Cashback Bonus for the months of April through June (from SD) – Lowe’s, Linens ‘n Things, Bed Bath & Beyond, Ace Hardware, Sears, Kohl’s, JCPenney, Dillard’s, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Circuit City, Borders, Godiva Chocolatier, Inc., FTD.COM. Pretty sweet list. Guess if you have house improvements, you should just wait up the next 2 months.