Bee's Birthday

So next friday (April 25) we are going to celebrate Debbie-J's birthday. She's turning 27 finally. What an old fart. So we'll be going to Red Robin in Langley for dinner that night (probably around 7ish) and then if we can make it we'll go see the new harold and kumar movie.

6 Weeks

Soon I can use this excuse to get out of work.

It's Like Talking to a Goat!

JacksenTube

Three things I know for sure. One, I wanted to see how to get the best quality video on YouTube. Two, Jacksen is starting to make more interesting sounds than crying. Three, many of you are dying to see boring home movies. So my first experiment in YouTube broadcasting stars Jacksen and has the un-cut, raw feel only parents wishing to capture every moment can create. Enjoy all three and a half minutes.

Update - Stormy asked how I got the video from camera to YouTube and I should've put it in here so I can refer to it next time. There were a lot of steps that video went through and it's still not perfect but it's pretty good for the first attempt. Most of the time was spent trying different combinations of filter and compression settings.

Amazingly, I used free software at every step and they were all high-quality.

1. Copy 850 MB DV file from camera with WinDV.


2. Open video in VirtualDub.


3. Set up Smart Deinterlacer, Resize, Levels and Sharpen filters.


4. Process video and save as XviD, 640x480, 2-pass, 1024 kbps, 29.97 fps. Save audio as Lame MP3, 48 kHz, 64 kbps, mono.


5. Upload 27 MB video to YouTube and let them re-compress to 320x240.

I screwed up on the aspect ratio though. This version looks fine but the high-quality versions YouTube offers are squished. I accidentally flagged the video as widescreen.

Next I need to find a good video editing app. The free ones all seem to suck in different ways.

Photoshop Express - Beware The EULA

EULA? What's a you-la? It's an End-User License Agreement and it contains all the things you agree to when you're installing software and click the "I Accept" button. Websites have the same thing but it's typically broken into two documents called "Terms of Use" and "Privacy Policy". Regardless of format, they serve the same purpose: grant as few rights to the end-user as possible without alienating them.

Why am I telling you this? Because Adobe got the "alienating" part backwards.

Yesterday Adobe released a web-based photo editor they've called Photoshop Express. Ignoring the fact that it resembles Photoshop as much as Notepad resembles Word, it's still a free 2 GB photo storage service and possibly a nice way to share your creations with others.

However, their EULA has a problem. There's one part of it that many are objecting to, and for good reason.

8. Use of Your Content.

a. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

Basically it means that although you retain ownership of your photos, you agree to grant Adobe a royalty-free license to reproduce your photos in any way they want. This is not good. Normally when a company needs photos they either hire an expensive photographer or pay top-dollar for stock photos which the original photographer gets paid for via royalties. However, if you take a stunning photograph and upload it into Photoshop Express, Adobe is legally able to use it for free for any purpose. You'll be giving away your creativity with no legal way to demand payment.

But why worry about this when other photo sharing sites like Flickr have been around for a lot longer? Because Flickr has an artist-friendly Agreement that leaves all rights in the hands of the photographer. If anyone wants to use your uploaded Flickr photos they are obligated to contact you for permission and you are allowed to request payment before granting permission. If they use your photos without permission you can sue them.

Adobe makes only creativity software so they know better than any company how business and art work together. Taking advantage of amateurs is abysmal. Until they change their agreement you should not use their service because it'll be likely those changes, if any, will not be retroactive.

Update, 2 days later - It seems Adobe didn't even read its own EULA and as a result of the backlash they'll be re-writing the section in question. Good for them, but it shouldn't have taken a barrage of negative press to effect such a change. My perception of them has now gone from evil to just stupid.

Mr. Fix-it's At It Again

One annoying fact of life is that given enough time, every device breaks down. Some things, however, usually take so long to break that we take their ability to function for granted. Major appliances fall into this category. Unfortunately, these days when one of them breaks people usually do one of two things, both of which are rather expensive: they call a repair guy or they throw it out and buy a new one.

But not me.

I'm old school, which is ironic given my career as a computer programmer. I grew up in a house where things were replaced only once they were broken beyond repair. I remember taking our cabinet TV to the repair shop more than once, until its rather expensive power supply died. Our dishwasher was older than me and still in use to this day. It'll be replaced soon but only because the bottom is rusting out. Our dryer was even older and is also still in use. Every five years or so my Dad has to take it apart to fix a break in the heater coil but it doesn't cost anything.

Needless to say I absorbed a lot of the do-it-yourself attitude and this past weekend I put it to use again. You may remember back in December when I fixed an awful sound in our washing machine. This time it was the dryer's turn. One day Lori turned it on and it didn't produce any heat.

On Friday I was out but Bill came over to visit and started taking it apart. He determined there was nothing wrong with the heater coil, which was unfortunate because that meant the problem was not as obvious as I had hoped.
When I returned home we searched the Internet for a wiring diagram and once it was found, grabbed our multimeters and started tracing. First we started at the obvious points like the heater sensors but when they tested in working order we followed the schematic. Starting at the main power we worked our way along until we found a resistor near the controls that was reading zero continuity.

Problem identified!

But the celebration was short-lived. It turns out the resistor had such high resistance that our multimeters read it as a continuity break but when we settled down and actually tested its resistance it was in the proper 5 kΩ range. The hunt continued.

Eventually we found a sensor that looked like its connector had melted to it. In fact, it was the sensor's internals leaking out. It read zero continuity and infinite resistance. Problem identified! This time it was for real. Luckily Whirlpool is very organized and not only do they have part numbers on everything as expected, they also have all those parts catalogued on their web site available for direct order as well as a list of local parts dealers. The part I needed was listed at $31.96 so I called Reliable Parts and they said they could get it by Tuesday for the same price plus tax.

Tuesday couldn't come fast enough. When there's a baby in the house laundry becomes very important.

When Tuesday finally rolled around Lori picked up the part and I installed it. Success! We had our dryer back in working order and it only cost us $35 and some elbow grease.

Now it's just a matter of time before the next major appliance stops working.

O.R.V.S.

I can say without hyperbole.

THIS IS THE GREATEST WEB BROWSER GAME EVAR!