Open Hatch

I’ve mentioned this electric sheep screen saver. Here’s one mpg from it.

I may find a way to batch convert them and incorporate them into the blog design. That won’t make it impossible for you to read.. Click either “play now” or “play in popup” to see it. If either of those don’t work, click the download link and have a look at it in Windows Media Player.

The screen saver has downloaded a bajillion of these goodies into its cache on my machine. Eye candy. I think this one is morphing between four different “sheep” IDs.

 

 00202=20781=20564=20717: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Referring to the previous entry, good luck with the truth anyway if the internets are against you.

Wow.  Bizarre twists on meaning become dominant and obliterate everything else.

(Except for one brilliant article pointed it out, and I’m posting about it, and you’re reading it.  Maybe it is always free or bound to be free.)

Ah ha ha!

“The truth will make us strong.”

I’m waiting for more.  Please.  Feed me another verse.  I’ll start compiling it into a Windows Bible.  Not that there isn’t at least one already.

At the same image resolution, Flash’ latest codec (On2 Vp6) at best quality produces ten times smaller file sizes than Quicktime! Sheesh! If the image quality is the same, Flash clearly wins for file size. As for audio, Flash uses an mp3 codec (I don’t know which) and Quicktime won’t - I’m using AAC. I’m guessing Flash uses LAME, and if this codec sound quality test is a good guide, audio quality between them is the same (usually excellent at ~192kbps).

The following clips alternate Quicktime and Flash format at the same resolutions, lower resolution each round. I’d like to know how these load for you and how you think the formats compare in appearance.

The last video in my last post should be the first in this, as I’m comparing it now to the same resolution (720×540) in Flash format. Please watch it again (link) before watching the first video in the following list. Then for each in the list except the last two, I suggest clicking “play in popup window”.

 

 Flash Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Flash Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Flash Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here is a script for something I’m going to shoot soon - my son will star.

My brother found (or passed along) this disturbing scream of a business someone did with the Showbiz Pizza Characters.

Warning: PG-13. Perfectly shames the source material without losing much for the dignity of the characters made to sing it.

LOVE IN THIS CLUB from ( *_* ) on Vimeo.

The end of this entry has buttons and links to play any of four different test clips (each of a bird and/or my son “Mago”).  I’d use the “play in popup” link first, starting with the last (the smallest).

The first clip is 1920 horizontal lines by 1080 vertical lines in the Sorensen 3 codec and some blah (I’m guessing) audio codec (Sony Vegas Pro lets me export to Quicktime, but not with AAC. Why?).

The second clip is 1920 x 1080 by Quicktime Pro (from an uncompressed .avi I exported from Vegas) with the H.264 codec (It seems that’s Apple’s newest video codec? - which I’m only guessing gets better mileage than Sorensen 3?) and with AAC audio at 192 Khz.

Both those files are blasted huge (45 to 55MB for a few seconds!?), so I’m realizing I just gotta sacrifice some video and audio quality for more compression..

The third clip uses Sorensen 3 and some crummy audio at 1280 x 720 resolution.

The fourth uses H.264 and AAC (like the second) and is 720 x 540.

Again, click “play in popup” to play any of these - I suggest the last one first - I wonder if the others will even load without a lot of patience..

For anyone curious I’ve started putting up notes on video encoding/distribution in my wiki (more - maybe a lot more - could aggregate there over time - I’ll see. The page title is far broader than the video notes there now).

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I ran across this today and tried it - so worth it.

It’s a screen-saver that does mutating, “genetic” computer-generated animated art for your screen-saver, and distributes these across the internet to everyone else who has the screen-saver installed, and users can vote for or against the various “electric sheep” (up arrow key votes yes, down votes no) so that cooler ones get promoted.  I took the following image from the sites gallery of current images (which fluctuates - they render new “sheep” images from user’s machines during idle time/bandwidth) and scaled it up - it’s a desktop now.

This is a link to the image because the thumbnail isn’t working for some reason.

I love that MATRIX screen-saver I found and will probably go back to it from time to time.  Meanwhile, this.

Perusing the blog of a friend’s friend with Flikr photographs of posters in a WWII museum led me to look for this treasure - man, I love this.

http://digital.library.unt.edu/permalink/meta-dc-422:1

There’s a larger archive of them at that domain.  I was moved by this one displaying a painting and poem, An Open Letter to the Unconquerable Greeks.  And intrigued by this one.  I haven’t perused the tenth of these posters probably.

Where has the world gone that gave so much place for posters like this?  Nowadays so much of it is nay, nay, America the evil, the guilty, and crazy delusions that we should do things like give our enemies the right of American citizen trials.  Uh.. they aren’t American citizens, and they kinda want to destroy our country?

And about that last poster, are folks careful about what they write in war time anymore?  Not so many any more, and not so much.

My pappy wrote this excellent editorial (funny also, I think) published in the Roanoke Times.