January 6, 2012 at 9:04pm
Notes
videomerge.sh
In the process of encoding my LaserDiscs of the theatrical releases of the original Star Wars trilogy, I’ve ended up with multiple files for each film. This is because back in my day, there was no BluRay or DVD and a LaserDisc can only accommodate 30-45 minutes each side.
For my co-host and those under the age of 30: Yes, we flipped a movie over periodically to continue watching it. The 1% had their “auto flip” LD players that had a laser that could play both sides without such vulgar measures, but most of us flipped.
In the case of the Holy Trinity, this is really ugly because there are three “sides” for each of the original releases, so you’ll end up with three files that you’ve encoded. Now how to gracefully get them all into one file without using really stupid workarounds?
You’ll need a script (below) and mencoder, which you can build from source or get binaries for at the mencoder download page. Ensure mencoder is in your $PATH, make this script executable, and merge your treasured videos into a single file.
#!/bin/zsh
usage ()
{
echo "do not taunt videomerge.sh"
echo " "
echo "usage: videomerge.sh 'newfile.avi' 'video-part1.avi' 'video-part2.avi' 'video-part2.avi'"
echo " "
echo "the third file is optional, and you can hack the script to support more if you want."
echo " "
echo $errmsg
}
# test if we have at least three arguments on the command line
# otherwise, what are you here for?
#
# if [ $# != 3 ]
if test $# -lt 3
then
usage
exit
fi
# test if file one exists and send an additional error message
# to usage if not found
if [ ! -f $2 ]
then
errmsg=${2}":File Not Found"
usage
exit
fi
# same for file two
if [ ! -f $3 ]
then
errmsg=${3}":File Not Found"
usage
exit
fi
#
# You can get binaries for mencoder from Sourceforge or build your own, out of scope
# for this script.
#
# mencoder will actually let you merge more than two files.
#
mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -idx -o $1 $2 $3 $4
Recorded episode 20 of the hellyeah! show tonight.
It’ll be up soon on the website and swiftly following on iTunes.
Tumbling the anniversary tumblers my wife let me open early.
Half of the world’s wealth is in American hands.
January 4, 2012 at 8:31pm
Notes
I’m actually not against anti-aliasing, but I absolutely cannot stand it when I’m using a monospaced font in a text editor.
I don’t like to change it systemwide, but to make BBEdit have different rules for anti-aliasing, get thee to the terminal!
defaults write com.barebones.bbedit FixedWidthFontSmoothingThreshold -int 16
December 30, 2011 at 1:40pm
Notes
Ron Paul has received an endorsement from a mouth-foaming Evangelical Ayatollah, who believes a Ron Paul Presidency would allow him to bring about a radical “Christian” theocracy to Americans.
December 29, 2011 at 4:24pm
Notes
a brief review of Hotel Marlowe, Cambridge MA
Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge is a fantastic hotel and a tremendous value. We stayed two nights of our New England tour in this hotel and as you may imagine I’m … fickle.
I have never stayed at a Kimpton hotel before, but if they’re anything like Hotel Marlowe, I’ll keep my eyes out for them. I’ve never really had a preference for a hotel before, so it seems kind of weird to me that I even care enough to say a few nice words about this one.
When I say that Hotel Marlowe is a tremendous value, I mention this because the expectation isn’t that it will be like checking into the Plaza or the W for a few days. We were traveling and trying to be frugal and looking to get the most “bang for our buck”.
Marlowe is a pet-friendly hotel, apparently something all of the Kimpton properties share. When we stepped out of the cab there was a big bowl of water and a bowl of treats for canine companions ready and waiting. If we had checked in earlier, I was informed there is a wine reception for guests checking in, too. In addition to this, the front lounge area had large chillers of water, one with strawberries suspended in the ice and the other infused with pieces of lemon and lime — I enjoyed both.
The staff at Hotel Marlowe are fantastic, everyone was delightfully cheerful and happy and eager to help. We had requested additional pillows for our room at the time of reservation, and they were there. We called down for a heating pad the last night there and it arrived in less than five minutes. The cleaning staff were excellent, and the one of the better parts of our stay at the this hotel was the restaurant downstairs: Bambara.
We had an excellent dinner on our first night, putting our stay off to a great start. Wife had their steak frites (Hanger steak, slow roasted roma tomatoes, arugula, herb butter, peppercorn sauce and fries) and I had a crispy half chicken (Semi boneless Giannone Farms chicken, potato gratin, chard, pan sauce), which was also my first interaction with chard.
The dishes were prepared beautifully and perfectly done — it was hard to declare a winner between the two, the first time we’ve had a tie as far as I can remember. Something worth noting, the french fries from Bambara are some of the best I’ve ever had — seasoned with garlic, salt and i-dont-know-what-else, but I couldn’t stop eating them.
They were french fries worthy of being mentioned thrice, I assure you. They were almost too good. If they had a roasted red pepper mayonnaise to dip them in, I could have set up camp and ordered plate after plate of them until being wheeled out by paramedics. One of my favorite comfort foods are french fries, and I love when they’re done so well.
In light of everyone being so nice and the food being so delicious, I have to give this hotel and their staff a strong recommendation. I can usually find all sorts of negative things to fixate on about nearly anything, but Hotel Marlowe didn’t give me the opportunity.
On the eBay scale, Hotel Marlowe is somewhere near A++++ would stay again territory. I’ll be back someday.
