KenBurns finally …
Posted by admin on July 10th, 2010 filed in UncategorizedComment now »
Okay, so I admit I have nt had a lo of time to play with QDVDAuthor the past few months. There was one thing though I wanted to add to the Slideshow generation for months now and have finally come about to add this in.
KenBurns is now functional in the Slideshows including transitions and all. The only draw back in this implementation is the lack of fine tuning from picture to picture. But who knows, I might implement a more detailed version if people ask for it.
As for now, it works well enough for me.
Also I wanted to thank the countless people reporting bugs in this app. I am trying to keep up the bug hunt and improve reliability this way.
Screenshot Pimp ( don’t )
Posted by admin on April 11th, 2010 filed in blogComment now »
A few months ago I needed to create some screenshots of web pages in firefox, so I went and installed the ScreenshotPimp extension.
All went well until today, when ScreenshotPimp was upgraded. After restarting firefox I was offered to have ScreenshotPimp handle my default search settings. This was odd, but after un-checking this option I was appalled by what I saw.
I just received a new row for the infamous ‘Bing’ search in firefox.
WTF. What has a screen-shot tool to do with my search settings. Puh-lease, this was the lowest blow ever and I despise the developer who sold his soul to Micro$oft.
This piece of crapware should be removed from the firefox add-ons repository. After all, if I really wanted to use Bing instead of another search engine, I would do so and install BingPimp or simply reconfig the search box parameters.
Grrr, another Sunday ruined by Mircro$oft.
Federal reverse
Posted by admin on April 7th, 2010 filed in blog, funnyComment now »
I like Documentary heave, it brings such nice things as this one here :
Why the federal reserve violates the U.S. constitution
An interesting observation I believe is that no matter how hard you try, or how long it takes, but eventually things will follow logical patterns again. Think of all those bubbles you have experienced in the past decade or so.
You knew something was off but could not explain why it was acting this way until the bubble eventually burst.
Documentary Heaven
Posted by admin on March 31st, 2010 filed in blog, funnyComment now »
Now this site is awesome.
I just spent on hour watching a documentary on The Car of the future. I am sure I’ll get dragged into the Science Fiction, Science Fact tomorrow.
Please enjoy watching some good entertaining documentaries.
Tax Away.
Posted by admin on March 31st, 2010 filed in blogComment now »
Phew,
I did finally finish my tax return for 2010. It was the first time I used TaxACT online edition.
I can give the online version a thumbs up. The only place I had to struggle was the Alternate Minimum Tax ( AMT ) section, which is so confusing because of the way the AMT works.
Anyhow, after a two day research and some chats with people I believe I got everything straight.
I asked one question to the support team and they responded within one business day, which is fairly good considering it is crunch time for them.
The cost for the Federal, and State tax return was $17.95- which is a fair value for the help it offers.
So all in all I am happy it is done and over with ( for this year ).
Is Silver Sick ?
Posted by admin on March 28th, 2010 filed in blog, ffmpegComment now »
GATA has a story about manipulation of Silver and Gold prices which, if true, would not surprise me at all. After all, the same people and companies were spewing out worthless AAA grade Mortgage based securities.
“It is common knowledge here in London among the metals traders that it is JPM’s intent to flush out and cover as many shorts as possible prior to any discussion in March about position limits. I feel sorry for all those not in this loop. A serious amount of money was made and lost today and in my opinion as a result of the CFTC’s allowing by your own definition an illegal concentrated and manipulative position to continue.”
Would it not be nice if this time around we would see action sooner rather then waiting for the bust ?
Just my 2c. Where are the investigating reporters ?
Phew … done !
Posted by admin on March 25th, 2010 filed in QDVDAuthor, blogComment now »
Nope, not with QDVDAuthor, just with the German translation. It took me about a month longer than expected. But at long last.
Of course I am sure there are a lot of places where it can use some fine-tuning, and I should probably switch to German to find them myself, however if you are German and you use QDVDAuthor, I would be very appreciative if you can give me some hints ( or better, a corrected qdvdauthor_de.ts file ).
German:
Ich habe endlich die Uebersetzung ins deitsche abgeschlossen und habe hoechstwahrscheinlich ‘ne menge Fehler mit eingebracht. Sollte dies jemand lesen, dann wuerde ich mich ueber fehlerberichte freuen ( oder besser noch, die verbesserte Datei qdvdauthor_de.ts schicken ).
I have also received a bunch of error reports which I have yet to look into. Tax season is taking its toll as well as my latest endeavor, which is separate from QDVDAuthor.
Of course all my old excuses still stand: Too tired, too much work at work, got to play with the kids, weather is too bad, weather is too nice, watched Startreck, watched Starwreck …
I love TED
Posted by admin on March 14th, 2010 filed in UncategorizedComment now »
There are some interesting talks which are good for a couple of hours of fun watching.
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.