Sunday, April 30, 2006

Zeb's Z-Rocket idea for exploring the universe

Guest blog entry on rocket design for space exploration, as dictated by Zeb:
There are 4062 engines that are this big (spreads hands wide) and there are big glass tubes where you go to sleep until the journey's over and you also get freezed. And you're going to go into hypersleep until the journey's over. And since it's so powerful it can explore other universes and it looks like a yellow base and a red middle and a nasa sign and a Z on the other side and a yellow top. And there's a a cannon in case the aliens are mean and its also magnetic [the cannon] and it can sort of clip onto the gravity. [q: what do you do when you clip onto gravity?] then it pulls you through onto land and the astronauts can explore the planet. This rocket's so fast it can get to a different solar system. It can shoot past Pluto in just sixty minutes and one second.

And now say "By the person Zeb aged 4 almost 4 and a half"

And now I'm ready for you to put my idea on the Internet and send a copy to NASA.

Ok?
Ok.

Bringing "Web 2.0" Concepts to the "Enterprise"

Good stuff here. Why is it easier for me to blog personally to the whole internet than to have a blog about my job to share with the people I work with?
Jeremy Smith's blog: What I Read Over the Weekend: Bringing "Web 2.0" Concepts to the "Enterprise"

Well, the Internet was a-buzzin' with articles, comments, and opinions on bringing 'Web 2.0' concepts 'inside the firewall' i.e. using them in the 'Enterprise' with emphasis on how it all relates to Knowledge Management Tools/Systems.

Saturday, April 29, 2006

HandBrake and ffmpegX are essential Mac OS X DVD & video file tools

HandBrake is all you need to take a movie on DVD and rip it to your OS X Mac, just like you use iTunes to rip a music CD.

I repeat, HandBrake is all you need to take a movie that's on DVD and rip it to your OS X Mac, just like you use iTunes to rip a music CD.

If and only if you need to convert some other random video format (Xvid or some random .avi files for instance) to something your Mac can play, then ffmpegX is what you need. Rather geeky interface but if you just select from the presets menu, things will be easy as 1-2-3.

The ffmpegX installation is a 3-parter, you have to download - from provided URLs - some zip files (open-source conversion source libraries) and then point the installer to the files you downloaded. Just read the install screen and you'll be fine.

You can also trivially use these applications to get your video, whether downloaded or ripped from DVD, into a format suitable for use with a Sony PSP (my portable entertainment center of choice at the moment) or a video-capable iPod, or the like. The documentation/howto links on their respective sites do a good job explaining what to do. And it is easy, really.

Documentation links:
The quickest handbrake walkthrough you could want.

Other HandBrake documentation for more specific topics.

Extensive collection of ffmpegX howtos - anything you want to do with ffmpegX, there's a howto document for it.

Enjoy...