Archive for October, 2006

Useful Site of the Day (or, Gay Porn — Gateway to Video Editing Geekhood)

{ October 10, 2006 @ 7:31 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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videohelp.gifIf you’re into video editing, video conversion, or DVD authoring/ripping/burning this is the site for you. videohelp.com is a comprehensive resource for video geeks. If there’s a hack for your DVD player, they have it. They have links to some really great tutorials and if you’re having trouble with your burning software or want insight into a program you’re thinking of buying, check with them first. There are a lot of free tools available and some DVD software packages are merely repackaged freeware so it’s good to make sure you’re not paying for nothing. I’ve been using them for 4 or 5 years and I’m always happy they’re there when I need them!

You may wonder in what capacity I found this site so useful or, how I got into video editing/ripping/burning. Several years ago I was just past the bleeding edge of single layer DVD burners and I loved the idea of capturing shows off my PVR and burning them to DVD. Burners, software, and capture devices were expensive back then (I paid around $400 for my Sony burner). I couldn’t find a way to justify the expense on such a selfishly geeky impulse. Gay friend to the rescue!

I was extolling the virtues of this exciting new technology to my friend when he came up with The Plan. It seems he had a rather sizable stash of gay porn on VHS. By sizable, I mean a large Nordstrom shopping bag full of tapes. They weren’t of the 3 for $10 bargain bin variety either. He had to special order most of them from expensive catalogs. He was justifiably concerned that his tapes would wear out or be damaged and wanted to pay me to archive them on DVD. I now had the funding for my new toys!

The tough thing about capturing video was that it used all of my system resources. There were times when my computer would bog down and ruin the file and I’d have to start over. The software was also a bit buggy. I had to monitor the video stream to make sure it went smoothly. No, really. I found this out the hard way! This meant watching many hours of gay porn in a relatively short amount of time. It was quite an education, let me tell you.

My half-formed notions and assumptions about gay sex were blown out of the water. Queer as Folk was on the air but I hadn’t seen it. Most of the videos were from Europe, where sex doesn’t have the “dirty factor” it does in America. The quality was remarkably better. The soundtrack was ofttimes an orchestral score. Sex and Mozart! I think he’d have loved it. In spite of being videos of hardcore sex in all manner of configurations, there was a sense of innocence about them. Strange but true! This is not to say they lacked shock value for a “good girl” like myself (hey, stop laughing!). Some of my thoughts at the time were (accompanied by wide eyes and hanging jaw),

“Whoa!” (this thought went through my brain pretty often)

“Holy shi!t, he’s almost up to his elbow! How is that even possible?!”

and
“Ahhhh, I see now what they mean by ‘versatile’.”

I found videohelp.com during this initial foray into the world of video editing and I don’t think I could have completed that project or many others without them. I’d have given up in frustration! So, thank you videohelp.com, you’re the best!

Too Much Coffee Man: The Opera

{ October 9, 2006 @ 11:10 am } · { Uncategorized }
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opera_card.jpgWhere else but Portland would you have the opportunity to see an opera based on the Too Much Coffee Man comic by Shannon Wheeler? Sometimes I feel so lucky to be here that I can hardly stand it! Sadly, I missed the opera’s first and extended runs, but this animated preview (it’s too hilarious) makes me hope they extend it again. If they don’t, I’ll be seriously bummed! Click the image and you’ll be directed to the Flash animation. Be sure to pay attention to the Italian subtitles. Viva la caffe!

On My Shiny New Laptop

{ October 5, 2006 @ 7:01 pm } · { Computers & Internet, Uncategorized }
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acer1.gifOooo — It’s shiny. It’s fast. It has a gig of RAM and a 120 gig hard drive. The screen is wide and clear. It weighs about 2 lbs less than my old Vaio. The battery lasts for 2.5 hours. It has a dual-layer DVD burner. I paid less than a grand for it. <Gush>

Installing all my sh!t on it is going to take a week! I keep remembering programs, codecs, and plug-ins that need to be installed. Soon, I will add my stickers to the cover. I hope I never have to take it apart, but a few years from now I suspect I’ll be writing a sob story about some part of it needing replacement. Until then, it’s shiny, new, and ahhh, very exciting…

Snow Patrol at the Roseland Theater

{ October 4, 2006 @ 12:12 pm } · { Music }
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Chasing CarsI wrote the following entry one afternoon last week while sitting in a restaurant eating lunch. I was too busy at work to blog last week and too busy in the evenings to blog at home. I spent the weekend on the couch , with a yucky cold, watching the first season of Lost while I worked on my laptop. See the next story down for that saga. Anyway, I’m finally getting this thing posted.

Saturday’s [Sept. 23rd] Snow Patrol show was awesome. I’ve been a fan of theirs since the moment I heard them in late 2004. They played a “December to Remember” show at the Crystal Ballroom with Keane, whom I also love but not as much. I’d never heard of them and was barely familiar with Keane. It was another example of loving the opening band even more than the headliner I was there to see. Sadly, I got there late and missed over half of their set. I was so bummed!

They came back in the spring of 2005 and played two sold out shows at the Roseland. For reasons beyond my comprehension (probably cashflow related) I missed them. I’ve regretted it ever since. When I found out they were coming around again to promote their new album, Eyes Open, nothing was going to stop me from seeing them. Instead, vocal chord polyps stopped their tour short of reaching me! They had to reschedule the show from June to September. I consoled myself with what I call “Snow Patrol Days” wherein I queue up their four albums available on Yahoo Music Unlimited and listen to them all day at work. I also have “Fall Out Boy Days” but that’s a different mindset and, ah, let’s not go there. <Ahem> Back to Snow Patrol…

Imagine my happy surprise when I checked the Bite of Oregon schedule and saw them on it! I didn’t believe it could really be them so I confirmed it on their Web site to be sure. Yep, it was them. I’d get to see them twice! But, no. The terrorists won a small victory and fouled up all the British Airways flights, stranding half the band and all their equipment in Amsterdam. As Tara on 94.7 said later, nothing short of Armageddon was going to keep them away from the September 23rd show! Consequently, my expectations were totally ramped. I’m happy to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

They were clearly happy to be here and had big smiles on their faces during most of the show. The crowd was very enthusiastic and remarkably well-behaved. The drunken assholes in the balcony left after the opening band, but that’s another story. I’ve seen Augustana twice and I’m so bored with them and so annoyed with their fans that I’m not going to waste another word on them.

Snow Patrol had Friday to bum around town so they went to Kell’s Irish Pub (what with the band being from Ireland and all). Here’s the part I don’t get and if you’ve made it this far into my fangirl post without puking, perhaps you can help me. Gary Lightbody (lead vocals, guitar) said they went to Kell’s and had an “Irish Jew.” He said it twice, and while I’m sure that’s not what he really said, my friends and I all heard it that way and couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. Whatever he actually drank, it brought a tear to his eye, and made him think of his mother. Enough gushing. Check them out, sing along, and feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Ahhhh Snow Patrol, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

On Dropping My Laptop

{ October 2, 2006 @ 3:35 pm } · { Computers & Internet }
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Last night as I got up off my oh so comfy couch to stumble to bed, I instead stumbled across my laptop cord. I immediately came to a halt. Sadly, my laptop did not. Instead it continued on its desired course, without the benefit of my steady guidance, and discovered that thing we like to call gravity. The crashing sound it made as it slammed into my hardwood floor seemed deafening in the otherwise quiet house. I could only stare in horror at the realization that the 20 hours of work I’d done over the weekend wasn’t backed up yet. Why-oh-why didn’t I back up those files?! I know better than that!

I hesitantly approached my sad little friend. Did it know that I ordered a brand new shiny replacement laptop on Friday? Was it trying to escape its fate of obsolescence by self-destructing, with the advantage of severely punishing me in the process? I’ve nursed this thing along for five long years. It saw me through the dotcom bust, trips to New York and Hong Kong, Windows upgrades, new memory sticks, and a new hard drive. One of its USB ports was busted in a fall four years ago. The battery only lasts for 2 minutes, long enough to race from one outlet in the house to another. It’s time for retirement, dammit!

It was lying face down, partially open, like a hard-sided tent. I picked it up from the floor gingerly, as if a slight jostle or squeeze would do it further harm. It was rebooting, the Sony logo sitting in the middle of the screen as if it didn’t quite know what to do with itself. This was not normal. That logo should have flashed by for a quick hello and then moved on to other things. Yeah, uh-oh is right.

No operating system found.

“Oh no, no, no-no-no-no…” I rebooted it again in case it decided to change its mind. Same thing. I won’t repeat here what came out of my mouth next, but it was a long howl of frustrated despair that started with an F. It was almost midnight. There was only one thing to do – search for a screwdriver.

I searched high, I searched low. All of my computer screwdrivers apparently went on vacation and didn’t take me with them. Bastards. The only thing I could find was a somewhat small flathead. It barely worked but I got the cross piece and keyboard removed. I started in on the hard drive casing but the screws were smaller and there was no room to maneuver the screwdriver amongst the tightly packed components. I gave up at 12:30, exhausted and out of patience. Have I mentioned the part about having a bad cold? I went to bed with the comforting thought that surely, the hard drive was simply disconnected from the motherboard and that reseating it would do the trick — tomorrow.

I asked it to hang in there as I left for work this morning but couldn’t resist going home at lunch to tackle it again. My plan was this. Reseat the drive on the motherboard. If that didn’t work, use my handy-dandy adapter cable to connect it as a slave drive to my desktop machine, which happily, already had the case off. My hope was to extract the data. I’ve had luck with that before when other hard drives have died.

Half a turn at a time I finally got the screws out of the hard drive casing and lifted it out. The piece of plastic that connected the drive to the motherboard was cracked and bent on one side. I pushed it back into place and carefully reseated it. I plugged in the power cord, hit the power button (without putting anything else back together), and held my breath. I swear, I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see a Windows flash screen in my entire life! I was so darned happy that I put the screws back in and put it all together without turning it off! That my friends, is what you might call a “bad idea.”

Fortunately for me, I didn’t electrocute myself or short-circuit my computer. It’s all put back together and working great, great being a relative term. Of course, I immediately got my files off it, just in case.

Here ends the melodramatic tale of how I broke my laptop and fixed it again. Join me next time, when I drop my brand new laptop, as is inevitable. I might even cry.

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