Words of wisdom.
Posted by admin on February 26th, 2010 filed in blogComment now »
I know about 39% of Americans disagree with me politically and that is okay, this is what democracy is all about but what I can’t get into my head is why do I have to read this in the Washington Post ?
“I’d like the Republicans to do a little soul searching and find out are there some things that you’d be willing to embrace that get to this core problem of 30 million people without health insurance, and dealing seriously with the preexisting-condition issue,” Obama told lawmakers.
Few Democrats expect the request to yield any breakthroughs.
Is it a bad thing to take care of 30 million people ? The expected cost, while tremendous, is still better then the Bush tax cuts IMHO.
I am worried though that the older I get, the more frequent I will need to go to the doc, the less likely I will be able to pay my bills, the more likely I will be left with a serious illness without proper treatment.
Unfortunately while this seems to be in my future, it is reality for millions of Americans today.
So when my kids grow up and ask why they are left to pay our debt I want to to be able to say “it was for the right reason, to help millions of people in this country” and not because we gave a tax cut to companies and rich people, started two wars and waited for the trickle down effect to rain down on all of us, which by the way has yet to happen.
Sorry for the political rant …
The best thing since sliced bread …
Posted by admin on February 23rd, 2010 filed in AstraNOS, Source Code, blog, funnyComment now »
I spent the weekend working with a new, cool tool I found online.
It is called CINT and is part of ROOT
The ROOT system provides a set of OO frameworks with all the functionality needed to handle and analyze large amounts of data in a very efficient way …
Thanks to the built-in CINT C++ interpreter the command language, the scripting, or macro, language and the programming language are all C++. …
The system has been designed in such a way that it can query its databases in parallel on clusters of workstations or many-core machines.
As for me, I created a server - client application which integrates cint and handles server requests synchronously from the client point of view.
I can’t tell you how cool this is to have a C++ scripting language to your disposal. Not only can you execute C++ as scripts you can simply mix and match compiled code with script code and vice versa.
I think the implications are seen only by those who understand C++ and what this tool can do for business logic running on a server. Okay I know java is jada jada jada … I just could never warm up to it. Full stop !
Also you can compile the C++ code into either bytecode OR you can compile it natively, just what the doctor prescribed.
So I think this is my cool find for the day. I got it through svn and installed it on ALL my machines without any compilation error or any other missing dependency.
Let it snow …
Posted by admin on February 20th, 2010 filed in blog, funnyComment now »
So you did not yet see enough snow flakes this year, despite living on the east coast of the US and experiencing a historic snowfall this year ?
You cant get enough looking at the white stuff and your eyes are watery seeing all the snow melting away ?
Fear no more …
Sad news.
Posted by admin on February 18th, 2010 filed in blogComment now »
Tesla Motors lost three of its employees
This is not my usual ’stuff’ I put on here but I feel sorry for the crash victims. My condolences to the families.
I really like the company too and if I could afford it, I would be lining up to get myself one of the roadsters.
However one piece of the above article really got me thinking. Why is it that this accident could cause power outage to a whole city, including hospitals and all. I just cannot understand why there is virtually no redundancy to the power grid.
Is this the best there is ? Palo Alto, the High Tech center of the known universe. Unbelievable !
Hilarious …
Posted by admin on February 14th, 2010 filed in blog, funnyComment now »
Are you getting bored of the Olympics already ? Good thing there are some internet sites to wast a few laughing moments at.
In your face !
Posted by admin on February 11th, 2010 filed in blog, funnyComment now »
Now here is a use that Apple had probably not envisioned for the iPad.
Hide and Seek
Posted by admin on February 10th, 2010 filed in UncategorizedComment now »
First off thanks to Igor B. we have now a Russian translation for QDVDAuthor. Please let me know if there are any other liguists out there wanting to help translate QDVDAuthor.
So we got some more snow today and broke the century old record for most snow in this area from 1899.
That’s why I took the time to create a DVD for my ever growing selection. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with regard to the buttons but I could not find a way to do this in QDVDAuthor.
So I put everything aside for an hour and implemented a new checkbox for Image, and Movie objects in the ButtonDialog.
If the box is checked, then the image will not be drawn onto the background. You are now probably thinking now why would I want to do this. Well Here is why:
If you have a background image which has already indications of buttons ( E.g. the head of a person ) and all you want to do is to create a highlighted, and selected mask for the shape, then you will like this check box.
Create a png image which has the shape of the head ( the rest is transparent ), then put it in place and define it as a button. Now in the ButtonDialog you want to
1) Specify your target video
2) Go to the Normal tab and check the new ‘hide’ checkbox
3) Go to the Highighted tab and change the type to Mask ( semi transparent colors look real good here )
4) Go to the Selected tab and change the type to Mask ( semi transparent colors look real good here too )
5) Create the DVD.
What you have now is a button which will properly highlight the shape of the persons head when you highlight or select the button.
Because you use the ImageObject to create the mask you can now create an unlimited variety of button shapes which you can mix and match with masks and shadows as you please.
Coffee for the masses …
Posted by admin on February 10th, 2010 filed in Source Code, blog, ffmpeg, funnyComment now »
The naked truth: “Programmers are tools to convert coffee into code”
And here are some things that was news to me.
Snow white, snow bright
Posted by admin on February 6th, 2010 filed in QDVDAuthor, blogComment now »
So what’s going on.
I am currently working on the German translation, which is in desperate need of some attention. Somehow I never found the time to spend much on it.
In unrelated news, we are being snowed in. We received a boat load of snow. So far about 15 inches worth of it and I am not talking side by side but on top of each other.
So I see a shoveling good an long workout in my near future.
Oh and speaking of workout. I started round 2 of P90X after finishing round one as P96X. My overall gains are not like those you’ll find on YouTube, but I am in much better shape than I was before starting this program.
So for those on the southern hemi-sphere who might make a trip to the beach today. Here is a picture from our back yard.
Translation table
Posted by admin on February 5th, 2010 filed in QDVDAuthor, Uncategorized, blogComment now »
I was digging around the DVDStyler web page and saw that they have stats about the translation of the application.
I thought this is mighty cool and wrote a small shell script, which generates a similar report and plugs it to the main web page.
