Friday, August 28, 2009

 

Guess what Kakerot?

I'm suffering from a bout of insomnia and for some reason, I had this little controversial thought come to mind. If a situation ever presented the opportunity to do a full brutal Vegeta style crotch-punch to somebody, who would that person be. (And if you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a YouTube clip for reference.)

So far I could only think of three people. I guess I'm usually not one to have a grudge.

  1. Robert Rug(rest is something Italian, but deleted.) General douche and asshole (pardon the language) that I had as an assigned dorm roommate during my brief 1 year as a student of Bradley University back in '95. This guy apparently was doing a side gig as campus gigalo (different chick every other night), but would also pull some other annoying shit without informing the roommate (me) ahead of time. Things like having people stay over or whatnot so I end up stepping on them when I get up. So they'd all be pissed and I'd be like who the f*** are you, and WTF are you doing on my floor?
  2. Masterchief King, NFAS Orlando, 1997 or so. That's the bastard that sent me to CCU just because I couldn't handle the stress I ended up under without breaking. No real crimes like causing property damage, or getting into stupid fights, or stealing. No, my crime was failing to make a number of assigned study hours because I freaking couldn't wake up when my alarm clock went off. The fact that I couldn't run worth shit (bad knees here) is probably what started it all. Couldn't make a run during one of the physical days, so then got put on morning PT. After that, I was feeling worn out and shitty thereon. So I start forgetting stuff. And that leads to being put on extended study hours. So then I end up working what is essentially 5AM to 11:30PM days. And then I break. And then I get CCU for that. I pretty much lost any respect for any unknown authority right there. (Never dealt with him before or since that.) And the cynism it fostered helped make my decision to not re-enlist.
    *Strangely enough though, the string of events after this allowed me to meet good people. I guess it helps if you can relate to unfair bullshit that's happened beyond your control.
  3. Random people who shouldn't drive. Yeah, this is like the temporary person of the day compared to the other two who I'd gladly "Darwin" in the reproductive sense. But there are those who just fail on some concepts that would make things so much safer or easier for everyone else. Things like going way slow compared to the speed limit, going the same speed regardless (45MPH in a 20MPH or 70MPH zone), or other failures of common sense.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

 

Two handy FireFox extensions for vids

Ever go to a webpage that has videos and the video you want to watch is only available in .mov format? It really sucks if you're on a PC or Linux computer, doesn't it? Sure it's easiest way for the guy producing it on a Mac, but for the rest of us - this is a problem. On the PC, QuickTime is a crash-happy bug-laden P.O.S., and that's putting it politely. And it'll happily crash your browser every time a .mov tries to play. On the Linux side, you'll probably get some scripty thing that whinges about not having Quicktime or some related B.S. So if you're like me and you like mplayer or VLC, the handy FireFox extension known as MediaPlayerConnectivity comes to the rescue. After this exension installs, it'll bring up two screens (iirc). The first one lets you change file player associations in the browser, this one you'll want to change. The next one has some kind of play-mode detection thingy, which is probably best to leave to the default. Once plugged in, bada-bing bada-boom! No more QuickTime crashyness when watching .mov based videos on something that isn't a Mac.

The next one is an extension that overcomes a problem that may come up in the first situation. You finally get your media player of choice (in my case it's VLC) to work, and that it does fine. However, some file formats get a tad "constipated" when it comes to streaming to third party media players. So you get buffering, one sec of play, buffering, one sec of play... On and on. Annoying, isn't it? Apparently the file just doesn't want to go through smoothly. So you bring it over locally with this handy extension, DownloadHelper. (Yeah, some people may bitch that you're leeching or whatever. The way I look at it is: First of all, you're giving away the video for free already. It's not costing you anything in comparable bandwidth if I download it. Second of all, I'm not planning on rehosting your file - thus you'll still be getting your traffic and unique page views for other people wanting to see your content. Grabbing the file overcomes a technical hurdle, and your current way of providing the content just doesn't work 100%. So this is a workaround.) After grabbing a file with DownloadHelper that doesn't stream nicely, you'll be able to play it just fine 99.9% of the time without the buffering nuisance.

So there you go, a way to play browsable videos the way you want to, and in a way that actually works. Problems solved, and easy peasy. Firefox and other free software is great, isn't it?

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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

 

H.R. what does it stand for?...

I figure the H.R. abbreviation actually stands for "Hawking Radiator". It must be a black hole and very dense. Lots of information goes in, but nothing comes back once it enters its event horizon. I'd really like to be proven wrong, but as of now that's really one of those wait and see games.

Also my mom is friends with the mom of the "Infamous Scribbler". From reading his blog, on some some issues we may disagree. (I'm not exactly soft on the immigration subject, and I don't think the U.S. should be giving away handouts to foreign nationals until there's good evidence that their home countries give reciprocal treatment to U.S. citizens.) But I'm more amiable than not in general, and politics aren't worth getting too worked up over in most cases. If I ever hear from him I may be doing some pro-bono work to help out.

As for the Infamous Scribbler's current blog post, I actually agree with it. It relates to my original point. And this (economy?) problem is not just an Obama era thing, I've been hitting the brickwall for the last two Bush years. So I'm having a 3 year dry run after college. Which doesn't help when my loan is more than 10x what I have left. (Unless I sell my car. But then how would I get to a job if it ever comes up?) I'll consider the economy improved when I can find decent paying work that actually takes account of my educational background and allows me to take care of my debts and quit mooching.

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