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Apr 22 2009
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tech

happy birthday grandma

There is no simple practical way to split the audio from the video in iMovie. Do you realize how fucking ridiculous that fucking fuckshit is? It wants me to import a clip into my project, then import another version of just the audio, then import the B-Roll footage making sure it’s at the end of the now extended project, then cut precisely the amount of video from the initial clip then move the B-Roll into place, then mute the B-Roll and the initial clip and god fucking help you if there’s the slightest miscue because then your audio gets chopped off the end because it is a fucking goddamn piece of shit-smearing stab stab stab my fucking eyes.

And the video is horrible because I couldn’t get a decent white balance in that room with the mix of light. Everything’s murky orange and grey and this whole thing is just an ugly disgusting mess. Grandma gets her VHS copy but there is no way I’m making DVDs for anyone else of this garbage that looks like it came from 1983.

UPDATE: I now have software that works and am less angry about the whole thing. It will still be ugly as shit but now I won’t have to break my brain getting it all together.

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Dec 01 2008
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tech

shaking things up a little

Those of you who read this via RSS won’t notice a difference, but I’m thinking of changing the look of thedubiousmonk here. The red and black are getting a bit oppressive to me. I’m thinking I’ll lighten it all up a bit. Maybe a new variation on my monk picture. Anyway, fair warning. If everything looks different in the next couple of days that is why.

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Dec 20 2007
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tech

so angry

Now I’m not Hassie in the whole professional “The design of this thing is so terrible!” kind of way. But MCC is so screwed up in the way they try to keep you from contacting any real people through the internet. If you don’t already know the person’s email address there’s no way to find it. Not even when the person is the head of a Peace Development division that has its own website (but no way to contact anyone! Gah!).

[UPDATE: I found the email address of someone in the Peace section of MCC, but not the person I'm looking for. So there is a way to contact someone for the stupidly persistent. I've sent an email to MCC Canada to get them to forward it on, but it's still just stupid.]

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Nov 20 2007
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tech

my bad

Well it seems I jumped the gun on the thedubiousmonk email address. After Sean pointed out he’d sent me a couple of emails I never received I have now learned I was missing some steps in the process, since I pointed the domain name at wordpress. Should be up and running soon now.

Nov 19 2007
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tech

like a DIYer but without any ladders

I’m trying to get my blog here to mirror all the things I like about Facebook without having to go into Facebook to do anything. You may notice off to the right there’s a Twittering box with the last three things I’ve been doing. I’ve got that set up to bounce into Facebook as status updates, and I can do that from my phone. Which I’m quite pleased with. You can also click on the Twittering title to go to my page and see other people’s Twitters, most of which are more interesting than the statuses of people on Facebook (other than ones used as text messages of course).

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Nov 03 2007
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tech

googlebrain

I know some people who are scared of the future. Really. Not just in a “We’re living in the end times and Jesus isn’t going to take me ’cause I’m not good enough” kind of way either. People to whom a story like Your Outboard Brain Knows All is deeply terrifying. I don’t think I’m one of them.

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Oct 17 2007
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tech, whining

metallic blue

My iPod shuffle finally ran down its battery yesterday after something like two weeks of using it on every trip to work and back. That is a suitable amount of music time. Thanks mom!

Just to be clear about that last post, I’m not mortally depressed about not doing anything cool right now. Just irked. And I realize that most people aren’t doing anything cool but in my head I’m not in competition with “most people,” just some idealized version of myself. Ah the perils of being an only child.

Sep 30 2007
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music, sports, tech, writing

how ’bout those mets

I don’t really have anything important to say about them. Jose Reyes got booed in that game. Magglio Ordonez won the batting title though. That’s not as good as the Tigers making the postseason but it’s something. And man is Curtis Granderson ever good.

On Friday I got an iPod Shuffle from my mom who won it at work. I’m pretty happy with it because it’s got a purported 12 hour battery life, meaning it’ll be my iPod for China in March and I don’t need to clutter up my Christmas list with one. Nope, the expensive part of my list is nice and focused now. Focused on a camera.

My writing’s been pretty sporadic the last few days, though last night I did a dialogue scene for 3dWorlder that’s pretty much the key to the book. If someone were trying to figure out what I’m trying to say about the incomprehensible present with my tale of the future, that scene is going to be the first place someone will look. I guess I also did a revised draft of that short film script too. When it’s not X words in a big chunk on a novel, it doesn’t feel as much like writing so I forget about it. Selah.

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Sep 22 2007
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tech

thick and winding

Through the miracles of previous cables and a coupler, I now have wired Internet in my room.  It’s kind of silly how much cable this takes (the cable goes down from the router to the basement where it gets threaded through the ceiling into the sewing room then back up over the wall into the laundry area where it’s connected to another cable that goes up through the floor into the storage room under the stairs then up through the stairs over the bathroom door then into my room), but if my computer refuses to detect the internet flowing through the air around it, there’s not much else I can do.  And I didn’t have to drill anything.  So that’s a win.

Sep 20 2007
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tech, whining

good solid cables

Back in the goddamned livingroom to plug in and check my email. I’m feeling more and more justified in my disgust at this computer of mine. I got what it wanted to connect without wires. I spent twice as much as I wanted to but I got a real AirPort card off eBay, not some knockoff that would work just as well. But it flickers in and out in its detecting abilities. The last time I could do something as time-intensive as check an email (you know, anything requiring ten seconds of uninterrupted netwrok access) was two days ago. Alison’s computer sits in her room happily chugging along, while mine can’t find the network when I press my screen (which contains the antenna) right up to our goddamned router.

I’m thinking about what I could possibly do to make this thing work. I wish Alison would let me run a cable up to my room, but she thinks that would be too much trouble. Or something. Although to be fair, most of what this coming down to be connected does is

Someday I want a new computer. A 24″ iMac would be so sweet. Although then I’d need a chair as I’d have to work at a desk.

As if to mock me, my WiFi icon is now sitting there all lit upand solid. Nope. Gone again. That window lasted almost three minutes.

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