I quit my IT job and moved to Alberta. I got my tickets and worked on the oil rigs in the winter and concrete in the summer. During my busiest year I made almost 3x more than IT. It was hard, grueling work, but I loved it. It was amazing to be able to see your work at the end of the day. I was out in Alberta for 3 years. Work dried up and now I'm back home looking for IT work along with starting my own business.
Actually, The original intro played and the one people would have heard 50 years ago was: "There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone"
Here's my chance to blab about the
PVR I built myself. It's
not pretty, but it runs great.
Here are the specs:
Leadtek
WinFast PVR 2000 TV/FM tuner card; P4 2.8E / ASUS P4P800; onboard sound; 512MB RAM; 80GB +
120GB HD; WinXP Pro.
The software I built uses:
Windows
Media Encoder SDK; Visual Basic 6; PHP;
FireBird;
Apache.
Using VB, I wrote code that goes to
Zap2It and downloads 12 days worth of TV
show programming and parses it into my FireBird DB. From there I have a web
front end that lets you search/sort though shows. You can choose to record one
show or create a rule that would record a certain show every time it's on. It
also handles scheduling conflicts by prioritizing rules and doesn't record a
show if it's been previously recorded.
The back end is a VB app that runs all the time and checks
the FireBird DB for the next show to be recorded. When it finds one and it's
time to start recording it issues a command line request to the Windows Media
Encoder to start recording on channel x for x number of seconds. The size and
audio/video bitrate are set using the encoder's profile editor.
The profile settings I use
consist of: Windows Media Audio 9.1/Video 9; VBR quality base of 90 (usually has
a video bitrate of just over 1000kbps); Video size 320 x 240. At these settings
the CPU uses about 20% and 1hr worth of video is about half a GB.
I play the shows by streaming them to the Xbox running
xbmc.
I also have a command line script that runs every night and
deletes any shows that are older than 15 days. If I haven't watched it by then,
it's not worth watching.
This setup has worked great for me for the last year. The
next step would be to replace the whole setup with
MythTV. I'd have the back end on my
computer and the front end on the Xbox.
The stop and reload are the same button. Can't do both at any given point, so why have 2 buttons?
Great game system but not a good movie player...
on
The PSP's Birthday Party
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The reason why...
a) Won't play popular movie formats such as quicktime, windows media, divx, etc without transcoding. b) Need to store movies on a sony memory stick with lots of memory.
Players that support popular movie formats and have built in hard drives exist now. But to become popular, I guess they need to be manufactured by a big brand and be able to run graphic intense games.
Since the moon rotates once for every time it orbits the Earth, the same face of the moon is always pointing to Earth. Hence the inappropriately named 'dark side of the moon'. This dark side actually has sun cast on it (as in a new moon), dark should mean the fact that Earth never sees this side. Anyways, while on the moon, the Earth never rises or sets, rather it sits in the same part of the sky and goes through it's phase changes (new, first quarter, half, third quarter, full, etc...) So the question arises, why would NASA refer to the Earth as rising. Unless, of course, they are on the lunar obiter just coming into view of the Earth.
Frequently Asked Questions
(added May 18th, 2002)
1. What if you wanted to use the fish tank as a reservoir for water cooling?
A) I briefly considered the idea, however it would require a rather large radiator to keep the water near ambient when it returned to the tank and it would most likely harm the fish.
The submitter forgot to post the last line to Fark. I'll do the repost.
Solar Super-Sail Could Reach Mars in a Month
Mars
from the check-out-that-stylish-new-icon dept.
ti-coune sent us a story running on newscientist describing solar super sails and how they could one day get us to Mars in a month. The key is a special new paint. The cast of Trading Spaces is unavailable for comment.
How much does it cost to download music at AllOFMP3.com?
The price of the files that you download is determined by the quality of the
file you choose to download. The price is determined by the file size and type.
The price of 1 Mb of the files marked as VIP or Online Encoding is 0.01 USD.
The price of 1 Mb of the files marked as Online Encoding Exclusive is 0.02 USD.
You will not be charged for previewing tracks are for the encoding process
itself.
Note: All media that is available with OEEX are also available for download in
regular encoding format."
This is Slashdot. If you (or the Russians) don't know the
difference between bits
(b) and bytes (B), than I suggest you (or the Russians) fark off and quit acting like your
advertising for AllOFMP3.com!
MB is commonly used when referring to a file size.
However, corporations routinely use Mb as a marketing leverage. In this case,
slip in Mb and suddenly the price is cut by a factor of 8. Download speeds are
increased by a factor of 8 when you refer to them as Kb instead of KB.
P.S. Don't come crying to me when you find out that you just downloaded a 23
min long Pink Floyd song and it comes to ~$2.60 (or even $5.20 for that matter).
You got it a bit wrong... It's $.01 / Mb (megabit). Which means it's $.08 / MB (megabyte). Therefore an average song of 5MB will cost you $0.40. This price is comparable with Real's prices (given that the song is not a long one). Further calculations reveal that an entire 80min album encoded at 192kb/s would cost you $6.75. Now that I've bashed your calculations, I hope I have mine right.
Contrary to popular belief, Times New Roman at size 14 takes up less space then Courier New at size 12. It's the proportional font width that reduces the length of documents. Hell, different fonts of the same size aren't necessarily the same size when displayed or printed. Don't compare apples to oranges.
Instead of getting a geek to test out all these products. Why not get an average joe off the street to use them. Which ever one he can transfer music files to, play and enjoy the whole process, should be the one that comes out on top.
Johnny Depp is more or less using the same acting style he used in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Oh well, if he didn't get it then, maybe he'll get it now.
What ever happened to this technology. From what I've seen, a reel could hold TB's of data. I see this being a perfect way to keep archived data online. However, the problem of longevity still exists. Oh well, just my $0.02
"If you're using KaAaA today, you're getting, in my view, a crappy quality song"
Consider for a second the implications of anyone trying to endorse a product, stating their product is crappy when in reality, you get an almost perfect duplicate ot the real thing.
You could send the email in html format with a picture in it with the source from a web server. With the image request from opening the email (or even auto-preview in MSOutlook), the web server has obtained the IP of the computer. One could also cross reference this with the name of the image that was sent.
Slashdot Mirror
I quit my IT job and moved to Alberta. I got my tickets and worked on the oil rigs in the winter and concrete in the summer. During my busiest year I made almost 3x more than IT. It was hard, grueling work, but I loved it. It was amazing to be able to see your work at the end of the day. I was out in Alberta for 3 years. Work dried up and now I'm back home looking for IT work along with starting my own business.
Actually, The original intro played and the one people would have heard 50 years ago was:
"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone"
All I have to say is that Tiger, let alone Leopard, is a better OS than Vista will ever be.
Here's my chance to blab about the PVR I built myself. It's not pretty, but it runs great.
Here are the specs: Leadtek WinFast PVR 2000 TV/FM tuner card; P4 2.8E / ASUS P4P800; onboard sound; 512MB RAM; 80GB + 120GB HD; WinXP Pro.
The software I built uses: Windows Media Encoder SDK; Visual Basic 6; PHP; FireBird; Apache.
Using VB, I wrote code that goes to Zap2It and downloads 12 days worth of TV show programming and parses it into my FireBird DB. From there I have a web front end that lets you search/sort though shows. You can choose to record one show or create a rule that would record a certain show every time it's on. It also handles scheduling conflicts by prioritizing rules and doesn't record a show if it's been previously recorded.
The back end is a VB app that runs all the time and checks the FireBird DB for the next show to be recorded. When it finds one and it's time to start recording it issues a command line request to the Windows Media Encoder to start recording on channel x for x number of seconds. The size and audio/video bitrate are set using the encoder's profile editor.
The profile settings I use consist of: Windows Media Audio 9.1/Video 9; VBR quality base of 90 (usually has a video bitrate of just over 1000kbps); Video size 320 x 240. At these settings the CPU uses about 20% and 1hr worth of video is about half a GB.
I play the shows by streaming them to the Xbox running xbmc.
I also have a command line script that runs every night and deletes any shows that are older than 15 days. If I haven't watched it by then, it's not worth watching.
This setup has worked great for me for the last year. The next step would be to replace the whole setup with MythTV. I'd have the back end on my computer and the front end on the Xbox.
Here's a link to the creator's blog where he performs a screencast of him playing Drivey.
The stop and reload are the same button. Can't do both at any given point, so why have 2 buttons?
The reason why...
a) Won't play popular movie formats such as quicktime, windows media, divx, etc without transcoding.
b) Need to store movies on a sony memory stick with lots of memory.
Players that support popular movie formats and have built in hard drives exist now. But to become popular, I guess they need to be manufactured by a big brand and be able to run graphic intense games.
Since the moon rotates once for every time it orbits the Earth, the same face of the moon is always pointing to Earth. Hence the inappropriately named 'dark side of the moon'. This dark side actually has sun cast on it (as in a new moon), dark should mean the fact that Earth never sees this side. Anyways, while on the moon, the Earth never rises or sets, rather it sits in the same part of the sky and goes through it's phase changes (new, first quarter, half, third quarter, full, etc...) So the question arises, why would NASA refer to the Earth as rising. Unless, of course, they are on the lunar obiter just coming into view of the Earth.
Frequently Asked Questions
(added May 18th, 2002)
1. What if you wanted to use the fish tank as a reservoir for water cooling?
A) I briefly considered the idea, however it would require a rather large radiator to keep the water near ambient when it returned to the tank and it would most likely harm the fish.
Solar Super-Sail Could Reach Mars in a Month Mars
from the check-out-that-stylish-new-icon dept. ti-coune sent us a story running on newscientist describing solar super sails and how they could one day get us to Mars in a month. The key is a special new paint. The cast of Trading Spaces is unavailable for comment.
"Question
How much does it cost to download music at AllOFMP3.com?
The price of the files that you download is determined by the quality of the file you choose to download. The price is determined by the file size and type.
The price of 1 Mb of the files marked as VIP or Online Encoding is 0.01 USD.
The price of 1 Mb of the files marked as Online Encoding Exclusive is 0.02 USD.
You will not be charged for previewing tracks are for the encoding process itself.
Note: All media that is available with OEEX are also available for download in regular encoding format."
- From the Payments section of help
This is Slashdot. If you (or the Russians) don't know the difference between bits (b) and bytes (B), than I suggest you (or the Russians) fark off and quit acting like your advertising for AllOFMP3.com!
MB is commonly used when referring to a file size. However, corporations routinely use Mb as a marketing leverage. In this case, slip in Mb and suddenly the price is cut by a factor of 8. Download speeds are increased by a factor of 8 when you refer to them as Kb instead of KB.
1 MB = 8 Mb
...therefore
5 MB = 40 Mb
40 Mb @ $0.01 / Mb = $0.40 (files marked as VIP or Online Encoding)
40 Mb @ $0.02 / Mb = $0.80 (files marked as Online Encoding Exclusive)
P.S. Don't come crying to me when you find out that you just downloaded a 23 min long Pink Floyd song and it comes to ~$2.60 (or even $5.20 for that matter).
You got it a bit wrong...
It's $.01 / Mb (megabit). Which means it's $.08 / MB (megabyte). Therefore an average song of 5MB will cost you $0.40. This price is comparable with Real's prices (given that the song is not a long one). Further calculations reveal that an entire 80min album encoded at 192kb/s would cost you $6.75.
Now that I've bashed your calculations, I hope I have mine right.
Oh how I love to ping and POKE my girlfriend. You're such a poor sucker...I think it's time to move on.
amazing...completely off topic, but amazing.
Contrary to popular belief, Times New Roman at size 14 takes up less space then Courier New at size 12. It's the proportional font width that reduces the length of documents. Hell, different fonts of the same size aren't necessarily the same size when displayed or printed. Don't compare apples to oranges.
Instead of getting a geek to test out all these products. Why not get an average joe off the street to use them. Which ever one he can transfer music files to, play and enjoy the whole process, should be the one that comes out on top.
Here's the old post.
Johnny Depp is more or less using the same acting style he used in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Oh well, if he didn't get it then, maybe he'll get it now.
What ever happened to this technology. From what I've seen, a reel could hold TB's of data. I see this being a perfect way to keep archived data online. However, the problem of longevity still exists. Oh well, just my $0.02
see: 35mm ICI-1012 TeraByte Reel Optical Tape
my other sig is a porsche.
"If you're using KaAaA today, you're getting, in my view, a crappy quality song"
Consider for a second the implications of anyone trying to endorse a product, stating their product is crappy when in reality, you get an almost perfect duplicate ot the real thing.
You could send the email in html format with a picture in it with the source from a web server. With the image request from opening the email (or even auto-preview in MSOutlook), the web server has obtained the IP of the computer. One could also cross reference this with the name of the image that was sent.
Good point. After factoring the cost of getting cable to your house, it would hardly cost anything to add additional channels.
go here
btw - my FP!
This is my first post...
I think it's great that something is being done about the data collecting that some banner advertising companies are doing.