Make them pay – literally
31 May 2009 | 21:40 | General, Humour | No Comments
Ahh – gotta love those crazy guys from The Pirate Bay!
In an attempt to put (financial) pressure on the law firm which opposed them in their recent court case, co-founder of TPB Gottfrid Svartholm Warg has recommended a strategy he is calling Distributed Denial of Dollars attack (DDo$).
After discovering the bank being used to faciliate online payments will charge (after an initial free 1000 transactions) 2 Swedish kronors (about 25c US) per transaction, Gottfrid is recommending everyone pay them 1 SEK online which should result in them owing the bank 1 SEK instead of receiving 1 SEK for each transaction.
Additionally the overhead incurred due to each transaction having to be handled by hand (due to the small size of the firm) will have the added bonus of costing time and productivity.
Maybe not something I’d recommend – but full marks for thinking outside the box!
10 tips for holidaying
23 May 2009 | 22:48 | Humour, Tips | No Comments
Forewarned is forearmed. Here’s 10 things to be aware of before you take a holiday – particularly apropos if you are to end up on a relatively deserted island.
1. Even if there is a “premium beer” category on the drinks menu, you shouldn’t expect anything better than Crown Lager. Unless you are flying Qantas, where you can get a bottle of James Squire (golden – not amber) for $6. This is a necessity as getting tanked is the only way to survive the 65 year old woman sitting next to you who only stops her nails-down-chalkboard sounding emery board action is to laugh in a booming voice at the hilarity that is Confessions of a Shopaholic.
2. Just because the steak costs $45, if there is only 1 restaurant to get dinner from, it’s not going to be better than what you can get for $25 at home. And It’s not going to miraculously get better the second time.
3. Unless you buy your shit at K-Mart, you should bring your own gear wherever possible and avoid suffering the (possibly diseased) crap that passes for hire equipment at the dive store.
4. Just because getting up before 10:00am sounds very un-holiday-ish to you – don’t expect breakfast to wait.
5. If you leave at 5:30am and are dressed appropriately and are travelling 6 degrees longitude or more (particularly in the “hot” direction) don’t expect your outfit to be suitable when you arrive in mid-afternoon.
6. Just because you get a bed, a bath, and a minibar doesn’t mean there’s mobile reception. Or this new thing kids today call the Internet.
7. It’s always good to pace yourself and try not to get a 3rd degree sunburn on the first day. Peeling gets old pretty quick (unless you are peeling someone else – which is fun for hours)
8. You can expect a fine selection of toiletries in your room (normally your bathroom) to cater for your needs. Unless you want to shave, that is.
9. If you are a bit of a reader, factor in (and pack for) reading a book a day. And If one of them is by Douglas Coupland, be sure to allocate enough time to periodically stand up and declare “fuck you’re a wanker!” If you are stuck for reading material, I recommend your camera user guide, you usually get a wide selection of languages to learn.
10. Unless you are trying to impress someone by showing them how flush you are, bring your own Pringles to save paying $4 for a 43g can.
But it’s not all bad – maybe you get to see something like this every night:
Adventures into stop motion
17 May 2009 | 18:31 | Linux, Photography, Video | No Comments
Everyone seems to be getting into time-lapse as a means of creating video from photographs, but because the scene is fundamentally static, there needs to be significant activity/action in order for it not to be boring.
Alternatively I’ve been looking at creating video using stop-motion. Before you see my example below, here are my steps (and settings):
1. Take pics
* ISO 100
* AV Mode; Aperture f/11
* Manual focus on infinity
* Burst mode
2. Resize
Use mogrify (from the ImageMagick suite)
$ mogrify -resize 640×480 *.JPG
3. Convert to flash video
Use avidemux (or simply ffmpeg if you are hardcore)
NOTE: Image files should be alphabetically/numerically sequential
* File -> Open : Select first jpeg
* Video -> Frame Rate : Specifiy desired frame rate (such as 15 fps)
* From Video dropdown : Select FLV1 (lavc)
* From Format dropdown : Select FLV
- optional add audio -
* Audio -> Main Track
+ Audio Source : External WAV/MP3
+ External File : Browse to MP3* From Audio dropdown : Select MP3 (LAME)
- generate video -
* File -> Save -> Save Video (Ctrl-S) : Give it a name
And then you can end up with something like (or hopefully better than) this:
Moonlight coming of age
10 May 2009 | 20:32 | Development, Linux, Technology | No Comments
As Moonlight 2.0 enters it’s preview release stage, the dream of Linux being able to enjoy the rich user experience and multimedia functionality (not to mention the cool eye candy) that was previously excluded from such 2nd-class citizens as us is looking suspiciously like becoming a reality.
Unfortunately we still can’t actually create a photosynth, but at least we can view them, take advantage of adaptive video streaming, and finally enjoy the deepzoom glory of sites like Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia and (more importantly) the Playboy Archive.
While the team was at it, they thought they may as well throw in a couple of the 3.0 features so you can also expect (amongst other things) out-of-browser support and the pluggable media pipeline.
See Miguel de Icaza’s announcement for more details, or grab it for yourself at http://go-mono.com/moonlight-preview/ and see what you’ve been missing.