Today was great - I'm learning a lot of new thing

Playing: various country

Today I looked at Stuff5’s blog, who makes a software type blog. I was thinking about doing my own with all original software of course. So my 2nd blog went online today at http://www.ian1984software.modblog.com. I found a nice background that looks like thunder bolts with a bluish theme. It looks nice. I wasn’t too sure about what logo I should put up so I did the matrix theme since the 1s and 0s represent source code, and it’s theme is very software driven I think. I started by adding my favorite software picks that I use at home in everyday life. Then I looked at updates of those software on Google, which saved me time. My first day, I made a lot of grammar mistakes because I was writing way too fast up to 8AM when I was very tired. I still had to revise some entries on this blog to make them more readable. I mean why have a blog if people can’t read it properly? I plan to revise this site and get rid of the sentence fragments and the extra words. When I write when I’m tired, I misspell and add unneeded words to my first draft. I make first drafts so I can easily move paragraphs around. Sometimes I get off topic or the paragraph on a particular topic does not follow one another in sequence. So check this new blog out.

I’ve been a Winamp user since 1999, and I’ve never really got into movie streaming video, until Tuesday. Nullsoft’s Winamp 5 is the second to exploit a free video service. Real Player has been doing this a long time too. Winamp is the 2nd application to put cable television out of business. This doesn’t mean that I’ve never used streaming video before. I used Windows Media Player on Gamespot before to stream in E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) videos. I also downloaded some QuickTime videos at IGN.com, last one about 2 years ago. That pretty much stopped me from downloading video. It took me up to this year to realize that Nullsoft had Internet TV! Actually, I was looking at alternatives video codec to DivX or Xvid, when I accidentally came across OGG Theora [ http://theora.org]. It was one of those rare occasions where I actually come across something very good by accident! I learned the format Nullsoft is using, OGG Theroa, which is almost as compressed as MPEG 4 from what I read. VP3 codec, which is apart of OGG Theroa, is completely open source so Nullsoft won’t have to pay licensing fees for video compression. Actually OGG Theroa codec hasn’t been released yet. I don’t know what extention OGG Theroa will have. This means free video streams for everyone! Yay! Unfortunately, it takes 2 minutes to actually show something over my modem. This format hasn’t even put into an application yet, it’s early in the beta. I downloaded the source code too. I don’t have the required compilers to compile it. Nullsoft could support some Xvid streams (Xvid supporters don’t need a license to use it). That would be extremely cool! I don’t see why they couldn’t do both? Actually, when you type in the URL into Winamp’s “open file” window box, it’ll stream in that file in real time for ya! For this sort of thing, I use Quintessential Player instead of Winamp for the ripping feature. This puts Windows Media Player at a disadvantage, streaming the smallest resolution. MPEG has got to be 10 years old, obsolete, and Microsoft is still using it as their primary video codec. WMA is okay I guess. I don’t hate it. I haven’t decided if I like it or not. MPEG streams are better than nothin’ so I don’t complain. I am so use too MPEG 4 codec now that MPEG just seems obsolete. Using the codec is just as easy as going to DivX.com or Xvid.com, and downloading the newest codec.

DivX – (v5.1.1) http:// www.divx.com/divx/
Xvid (v1.01) – http://www.xvid.org/downloads.html

All the codec are designed to be compatible with Windows Media Player anyways. So far, I know Microsoft is developing the next generation of video called XMA, this new video format is going to be used with the Xenon console. So no one will see this codec used for streaming video for a while, sorry video compressing dudes! Remember the more advanced the codec, the more CPU power it takes to compress it.

Okay, okay, I’m being dead obvious here, but it took me 6 hours to compress Lord of the Rings - Return of the King in DivX in slow setting (the slower the compression process, the better compressed, and image quality the video is) I should try Xvid MPEG 4 codec sometime in the near future. I went to Afterdawn.com, and looked up Xvid vs. Divx, and I get results saying Xvid is better against DivX 3.11 (sometimes called DivX (with smiley), an illegal codec), but compresses bigger files than DIVX 5.1.1 Pro (free legal codec). In case you were wondering, with DixV 5.1.1 codec, I compressed the first 1 hr 35 minutes of Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers at 800x600 (470 KBPS) at 477 MB - enough to be put on CD. The video was a little pixilated (blocky), but the sound was good (I used LAME mp3 codec at 192 KBPS). The blockiest will go away if I set the KBPS up to 700, but that will increase file size quite a bit. So the DIVX file size of Return of the King was 910 MB compared to David’s videos he got off Kazaa, which were approximately 650 – 700 MBs each. I’m starting to figure out how to get video at a good resolution below 700 MB. (make the resolution 420x360 at 420 KBPS.)

I tried out Crash Bandicoot 2, and it was a fun game. I love Crash… now I just have to figure out why I love him! Yeah, I know, Crash is a 2 legged dog with big eyes and his tongue is stinking out. I played and beaten Naughty Dog’s famous PS2 platformer, Jak and Dexter. Very colorful graphics I must admit. The game engine was above average at the time too for PS2 standards. Pretty soon all you’ll really care about is if a game is high resolution or not? If not true now, it will be come 2005 when your wondering which console to buy. Most games are not suppose to look like Final Fantasy X or Metal Gear Solid 3 because those games are exceptionally good. I got this CD that allows me to watch DivX movies on Playstation 2 called Action Replay MAX Evo Edition! It cost me 40 dollars to get, but it might be worth it after all. The first movie I tested was Monty Python and The Holy Grail which worked. The movie was a little blocky though.

On Sunday, I’ve been reading a little about Modchips for my PS2. I found this software, called the HDD loader [ it’s on Modchip.com ] which will rip the PS2 DVD onto any external serial-ATA hard drive, and play the game as a virtual drive (DVD-ROM emulation). Only 40 dollars! For the software and some Ethernet to USB adapters I assume. Wow! I want it. The possibility of PS games also works with this feature, from what I read off Modchip.com. I uploaded 950 MB worth of movies on my USB 2.0 drive, and it took 8 minutes to upload. If I had HDD Loader, I would go to Bob’s house, upload his games, and play them on this virtual drive for PS2. I have a confession to make. See for PS1 games, I just pop it into my DVD-ROM on my PC, and play them on EPSXE. After all it’s free! EPSXE works a whole lot better than PCSX v1.5 ever did. It not only works…I wonder if someone who programmed for Playstation games helped design the emulator. The Japs are good for that ya know? They talk funny with their heavy accent but no one can deny they make the best videogames in the world.

I wouldn’t make any sense for me to buy a mod-chip for PSone now. I bought my first Playstation in February 2002 when Playstation emulation was already possible on PC, Linux and MAC. I remember I was playing with Bleem once. I hate Bleem, it never worked well.

Yesterday, Bob invited me to his apartment. It’s been too long since last time we met. I’ve been getting a little bored with nothing to do at my house. When I walked in the door, he had his Slipknot really loud. Laurence and him talking about swimming nude (for jokes). Not exactly a fruitful discussion. A nudist pool party for men, and I thought, “Whoa, not for me, man.” I know there were just joking, else I would have left. Bob’s dad is going to put off a show on the 4th of July. The fireworks he’s going to use up is worth 2000 dollars. That is if I go. Problem is all I would be doing is being in a sallow pool and getting wet. Problem is I don’t like extremely loud fireworks, and that’s what fireworks are, extremely loud. What’s the point? His Dad, Dan, is going have a $2500 firework night with some heavy metal going in the background. His dad has a lot of fireworks he bought by groups which he sells to other people, but this year he has a bunch left over. In Wisconsin, fireworks are perfectly legal, and in Minnesota you can’t have them….at least not in town. To most cities’ fireworks are considered explosive material which can start fires - thus considered illegal to own privately. Out in the country, away from the police, people might get away with it. In fact, they do…the sound gives it away….unless the county sheriffs don’t care. Wisconsin is filled with firework businesses. The best one I know of is the one by Fleet Farm in Hudson. There must me 3 million dollars worth of fireworks in that tent. Some people order fireworks by volume, while the majority just buy a little of everything. There are as many people trying to get rid of fireworks as there are businesses that try selling them in bulk. The only limit on fireworks is how far they go up in the air. However in Wisconsin, there are licensed firework gun pouter organizations that get paid to by smaller towns to put on a good show. There are plenty of towns up by Siren, Wisconsin who would pay a lot of money to have a firework show.

Bob says we’ll have a 80s party next time I’m over. We’ll play Atari 2600 and NES. This might mean I have to ware jeans for once. I never ware jeans. I mainly ware baggy cargo pants. It’s what’s in! Bob has Tetris, Frogger, Pacman, Pong for Atari and Super Mario Bros, Tetris, Legend of Zelda and Metal Gear for his NES. Bob gets affensive about Atari when I say anything negative about it. We’re also going to listen to 80s heavy metal bands like Poison, Guns ‘n Roses, Aerosmith, KiSS, and ACDC. I told him that I could bring my PC over, and bring JNES or Z26, and play some of those games. Bob has 2 NES, 2 Atari 2600s, a Genesis, and a Sega CD add-on for Genesis. Hehehe. Bob once thought SEGA CD was going be popular when it failed miserably in sales. There wasn’t time for games to come out for it. Sega CD was there (next best thing), and 6 months later it vanished. I saw one at Toy’s 4 Trade and I saw the poor game selection and thought, “This is exactly why nobody buys the thing.” Bob nearly forgot that Genesis came out in 1989, so playing it would be legit. Personally, I hate staring at Atari 2600 graphics. I have z26 (Atari 2600 Emulator for Windows), and 20 ROMS. Atari 2600 roms are really small, only 10K each compressed. They’re so simple that I hate playing them. Period. You won’t get me near an Atari 2600, ever. You can find them at fan sites which are dedicated to remember ancient computer hardware. I mean these people probably hug their Ataris, and keep it in plastic bags. Bob’s not this type of fanatic, both of his Ataris are in a box somewhere at his dad’s house collecting dust.

I talked about the upcoming consoles to Bob. I wanted to amuse him, anything to make things over there more interesting! I told him that in 2005, Microsoft may release it’s new console.

I showed him Colony Wars (PS game) by showing him the tough level I was on. That’s not what’s important. What’s important is he thinks the game is uninteresting. He and I played a little Tekken 4, which I whopped his ass in. Then we played Tokyo Extreme Racer Zero. After that, Bob and I played SSX 3, which we scored even on the racing and tricks modes. He thought the techno / rap tracks in SSX 3 were really cool. Bob hates rap. He has surround sound at his house, upper range Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. We just had to play a little Gran Turismo 3 - A Spec before I went. Gran Turismo 3 was one of the first high profile racing titles for PS2. That is if you considered Ridge Racer V a high profile game in 2000? I thought RRV was only medium profile. I wasn’t playing that game, only Bob and Laurence. Bob was getting tired so I went back to my house, brought back Bob’s DVD collection. I wasn’t because I had 4 cans of cream soda. Bob, in return, gave me new DVDs like the Matrix and Goldmember to rip to my hard drive with my favorite ripper, 1Click DVD Ripper v2.03. Frankly, I don’t need Gordon Codec package anymore. Gordon Codec Package had Virtual Dub, DIVx codec, AVI splitters, Vob rippers, etc. All that stuff I used when I first used DivX seven months ago - times have gotten better since then. I was weary about using 8 GB of hard drive space for each video, now I didn’t need take time to copy the movie than compress ‘desktop video’. No offense to Linux, and open source software, but I will use any software that works well for me, open source or not. I understand there is this thing about sharing source code, and being close to the GPL license. The whole idea that software should not cost anything, only the media it’s on should cost. I am little confused by venders, such as Red Hat, which make you pay 100 dollars for open source software. Red Hat is supposed to be the best at what they do, and you pay for it. But in my opinion it’s worth it, and cost me no money so I’m not complaining. Yet, the profit organizations like Red Hat are not as greedy as Microsoft. Microsoft has 100% closed source in their OS, and that makes them own 100% of all the source code, so 100% of the profit goes straight to Microsoft. I don’t know why how you can call Microsoft’s OS state-of-the-art? Linux venders release new versions every 6 months with updated software. Problem with Linux is it has required files too, and sometimes these files do not come with the OS, so a lot of times executable packets won’t install. That’s the sad part. That’s where tar.gz files come in. Sometimes these uncompressed great, and the programs run without the OS thinking it needs runtime files to extract the files automatically. Mozilla is a great example of this. All versions run great on any Linux whether they come in a RPM file or tar.gz file. I really, really want to install Red Hat on my Dell, but Dells are anti-Linux machines. My PC literally blocks Linux out, and I have no clue why it does that. It’s a mystery. I called Dell tech support and they said they don’t support Linux at all.

I think today I’m going to attempt to install Linux on my Dell, Red Hat 9.1. But first I tried Knoppix since that doesn’t save partitions to the hard drive. I fiddle with the BIOS setting until it boots. This way there is little chance I’ll loose Windows XP. RAID has to be on OFF for this to work I think. Why the hell does the computer think there is a virus when RAID is ON? My Dell PC hates Linux! I think I said this before. I want Red Hat Linux installed on my fastest computer at home, and it blocks it out…for no good reason. I’m pissed off at Dell now.

Today, I’ve been watching Rocky and Rocky II on AMC. Both are good movies. Sylvester Stallone gave one of his best performances in Rocky. This movie made boxing cool. He really acts like a bum from the ghetto trying to make something of himself. He’s showing off his street smart attitude in boxing. Rocky was a little better than Rocky II.

Summer vacation is great, I can watch TV all day or look on the Internet all day for stuff, download music over my modem – never have to go anywhere I don’t want too. It’ll be this way for another month and 1/2! I found this really cool webpage with abandon-ware games on it (really old and abandoned software), and I want to go to school to download them. Downloading games off the Internet, someday I’ll look back 20 years from now and say, “Wow, where did I find this game.” knowing I’ll always have it. I may find a ‘diamond in the ruff’ on one of these abandon-ware websites (not ROM sites). A good example are these freeware Sonic the Hedgehog games that resemble the Genesis era. I am looking for a RPG game that has good graphics comparable with the NES, SNES era graphics that some talented programmers made. Like most of my games, they’re probably sitting on my shelf stored on CD somewhere. I have a couple ‘diamond in the ruff’ videogames including Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy Chronicles, Final Fantasy 9, Mega Man 2, Donkey Kong Country, NiGHTS, Mega Man X4 and X6, Castlevania - Symphony of the Night, Super Mario 64, Legend of Zelda – Orcania of Time, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Goldeneye. Pretty soon all the N64 games will be considered old school games, and I’ll be talking about when I’m 30 years old saying, “Yeah, I’ve played that game, and I still own it.” Most people are just the opposite whom sells their old games to get more trade in credits for new games. All the newer games are is games that have graphical improvements. But that’s alright, I have bought the newer ones too. I have this bad habit of partially playing through one game only put it down for another game. I have memories of buying Super Mario 64 for 70 dollars in 1997 – expensive game, wasn’t it? I also remember the flashbacks when SNES, and Sega Genesis were still available at Wal-Mart. I don’t remember seeing Sega Saturn games though, even in 1998, when it was taken off shelves. No one likes the Saturn anyways so it is not worth thinking about anymore.

I thought about going to Florida to live. I don’t know what town to live at? I only know that I rather live where it’s Summer year around. I hear taxes are more in Florida, but maybe I’ll find a rural area to live. That will mean I won’t inherit my parent’s house. I want to eventually get all the land from my parents cheaply than I can concentrate on electricity, gas, water, sewage costs. It would be nice if I could pay low monthly payments while living in a bigger house. I would have to mow the lawn, and cut down trees with a chainsaw and stack them myself. If I get a wife than she might want to go somewhere else, and I want to live inexpensively so I can save money, and perhaps put money away some towards retirement. I’ve just started research on Floridian towns today.

Okay, I know my entry is getting a little long - and well - I like long entries because I have a lot to say. It looks like I was completely wrong about Monkey Audio (lossness audio) replacing MP3. My apologies. It looks like WMA (Windows Media Audio) is quickly replacing MP3 on the Internet. I’ve have some of it on my computer, like most of my Planetary Radio broadcasts. A 30 minute broadcast can be compressed to 6.5 MBs. That’s extremely small and the quality is like AM radio. It can easily be streamed with modem users and still give better quality than Real One (formally known as Real Player) using the same broadcast. It makes RAM (Real One’s Streaming audio format) broadcast obsolete. I know this because I have Real One, and RAM doesn’t sound as great as WMA or MP3 streams. MP3 Pro is a commercial MP3 codec that is suppose to sound better at 24 KBPS or 64 KBPS than LAME mp3 codec. However, it’s just a slight difference. LAME’s sound has improved a lot since 1999, and there isn’t any static or pauses in the sound anymore. I remember using LAME when it first was released, and there was a lot more static and sound glitches in the music than there should have been. From 1994 – 1998 MP3 was used just in Internet audio streams by commercial radio stations. I heard somewhere that FHG for a long time was the only MP3 codec that existed. FHG was the first MPEG codec. MPEG codec was in beta for much longer than the MP3 codec. That’s because compressing video in real time uses much more CPU power. Today is much different, everyone with a decent computer can make video in real time if it’s not compressed too much. I mean while still retaining the high quality image. That’s why AVI is so popular now-a-days. Which format can be the most compressed in real time? The answer to that is AVI. I found that MPEG 4 TV compressors have come out, and compress TV shows in real time. If you get the ones that can connect to your computer to use as hard drive space, it’ll cost only 100 dollars to get those. I don’t know what TIVO uses to compress it’s video? Does it use MPEG 2? TIVOs are getting popular, my mom wants one for Christmas.

This is Ian signing off.