2008
 Feb 
27 

“Stop Calling Me a Crypto-Nazi or I’ll Sock You in the Goddamned Face!”

Filed under: government,media,tv — admin @ 1:03 pm  

Rest in peace, Bill.

2008
 Feb 
26 

Blame

Filed under: 08 Elections,clinton,egos,elections,schadenfreude — admin @ 9:18 am  
2008
 Feb 
25 

Disingenuous

Filed under: 08 Elections,clinton,elections,government,how to alienate me — admin @ 9:23 am  

Smear

Filed under: 08 Elections,clinton,egos,elections,how to alienate me — admin @ 7:53 am  

Pity

Filed under: 08 Elections,andrew sullivan,clinton,egos,elections,government — admin @ 12:25 am  
2008
 Feb 
24 

Desperation

Filed under: 08 Elections,clinton,cnn,egos,elections,how to alienate me,media — admin @ 5:09 pm  
2008
 Feb 
23 

How To Encode DVDs to Watch on the iPhone

Filed under: apple,iphone,media,movies,tech — admin @ 2:26 pm  

handbrake grab…assuming you have a Mac computer with a recent version of iTunes and a DVD/combo drive or better, running OS 10.4.10 or higher:
Download HandBrake. Unless you’re a command-line freak, use the GUI link.
Install Handbrake from the downloaded / expanded .dmg file. Open the application.
Insert a chosen DVD into your Mac. You can encode the entire DVD for viewing on your iPhone, but depending on the quality, the resulting file can be over 4 gigabytes– make sure you have room on your iPhone before you load it up with video files.
If Apple’s DVD Player auto-opens, close it (or, at this point, if you don’t want to encode the entire DVD, you can skim through it and note the chapter(s) you want to encode for your iPhone. If the latter’s the case, close DVD Player when done. DVD Player and HandBrake do not play well together; avoid playing a DVD while HandBrake is indexing it).
Click “Source” at the top left of the HandBrake menubar.
When the Finder box comes up, locate the DVD on the Sidebar and/or Volumes popup, or in the Desktop folder on your Sidebar. Highlight the DVD icon a click Open.
HandBrake will pause while it scans/indexes your DVD.
A “Presets” drawer should have slid (slided?) out the right side of the HandBrake window (if it doesn’t, click the “Toggle Presets” icon on the top right of the menubar). Select “iPhone/iPod Touch” from that Presets screen.
Now you’ve got to decide/remember which chapter(s) you want to encode. Under the Source: menu (not the same as the Source menubar icon) there’s a Title popup where you can browse selections on the DVD. Often there will only be one. But you can also use the Chapters: popups to the right to select a specific range of chapters. Or encode the whole, huge thing.
Check again that the Presets drawer has “iPhone/iPod Touch” selection highlighted.
You can tweak the name of the file, the Framerate (FPS), Quality, etc. I tend to leave things at the default setting.
Click “Start” on the top menubar. A progress bar along the bottom of the HandBrake box will tell you how long encoding will take.
Default location for the encoded file should be your desktop. Locate the file. Open iTunes. Click on your Movies folder in the left sidebar. Drag and drop the encoded file to the Movies screen. Wait for it to copy to iTunes.
Tether your iPhone to your Mac via USB as you would for a sync. Click on your iPhone on the Devices menu on the left sidebar of iTunes.
On the tabbed “iPhone/Version/Options” screen in iTunes, click the Video tab at the top of the screen.
In the Movies section, click the checkbox for the file you just encoded.
On the bottom right of the screen, click Sync.
When syncing finishes, go to the iPod application of your iPhone. Tap “Videos” at the bottom of the screen. Your newly encoded file should display in the menu.

2008
 Feb 
21 

Best Buy’s Geek Squad: Privacy-Invading Sleazeabaggery Reported

Filed under: big box retail,how to alienate me,human rights,tech — admin @ 8:59 am  
2008
 Feb 
20 

Next Week: Daddy Trashes Timeclock, Stomps That Rude UPS Driver

Filed under: tv — admin @ 8:21 am  
2008
 Feb 
14 

“I Need To Let People Know What Kind of Music It’s Okay to Like Next Year”

Filed under: egos,how to alienate me,movies — admin @ 12:53 pm  

As if Juno wasn’t perfectly capable of providing enough potent backlash by its humble, quirky, bad self, a (satirical) marked-up follow-up screenplay has been, um, leaked.
What IS the mom from Arrested Development doing right now? Does she have a Twitter account?