Bob Space

Well, bummerocious. It’ll take an instruction book to get me to where I can customize iDVD menu themes.

And iDVD and iMovie won’t accept the MPEG-2 files I’ve been capturing with Miglia TVMax/Elgato EyeTV. They’ll either need to be captured in another format, converted to another format, or pre-processed and then substituted into a completed DVD image made by iDVD (and then reimaged and burned to disk).

I never thought I’d miss Capty DVD, even though it was ignorant of Half-D1 resolution and insisted on up-rezzing it to Full-D1.

Capturing the home movies (from the DVD camcorder) into MPEG-4 format for proper editing is not a horrifying prospect. Capturing the EyeTV output as MPEG-4 … is doable, but it means a massive sort of data conversion come burn time, and I’m dead certain the data will get up-rezzed for DVD, which means less programming per disc.

So, I expect that iMovie and iDVD are not going to be a major factor in my day-to-day video hobby activities. That means I really need to work harder on mastering the Photoshop files which Roxio Toast uses for its menuing structures.

(Some readers are saying, “Huh? Why not just leave them in MPEG-4? They take up less space and look just as good.” I might experiment with this. After all, I had no qualms leaving them as MPEG-2 files on DVD-ROMs before I started switching over to DVD-Video. But a lot depends on the destination playback equipment, which isn’t always under my control. In such cases, DVD-Video is the safe bet.)

Time for lunch.

Welcome to Bob’s Mind, a new category where I will complain, explore, ruminate, and just generally do all sorts of things that a lot of bloggers seem to do with their blogs. I haven’t felt the need until recently to air my beliefs — we certainly hear enough people’s beliefs every day that adding my voice to the din can’t remotely be imagined as productive. But I always understand myself better after I’ve said things aloud. So brace yourself: reading in this department means you’re going to end up understanding me (even if you probably won’t agree with me). What a gruesome fate.

(The icon is of my own design.)

No, not a new mouth to feed, but a new little computer to cuddle and adore. We’ve ordered an iBook for the Lady of the Manor to use. It’s one of the mid-2005 series, one of the last iBook G4s, with quite reasonable power and capacity for the Lady’s needs and comfortably within our tax-return budget.

Now I just have to get up the nerve to install a fix to the iBook G3 that I want to use for my rocketry education support.

In the previous post, Bob reported that the Black & Decker Start It 450 Jump-Starter/Inflator delivered 120 V AC through an onboard converter. This was incorrect. This device has no inverter and no AC output. Bob didn’t quite feel up to spending the extra money for that feature at this time.

Bob regrets the error.

1) iWork ’08 Family Pack and iLife ’08 (tip ‘o the rug to Kevin B) Family Pack are paid for. It turned out to be much easier to buy iLife ’08 at a decent discount new than to try to find an older version in a trustworthy state. Kevin rightly pointed out that I can still get the iMovie version I need without additional expense.

2) We did the homework on buying an older PowerBook or iBook 15″ for the Lady of the Manor. Now we just have to find one in good condition that some soul will be willing to part with (not a trivial consideration given how much we love our Macs, and PowerBook owners are the worst of the bunch).

3) The Lady’s hands-free speakerphone has been dead o’ battery for a week or two, and we’re not really in a position where we feel good about leaving it plugged into the car for two hours unattended. So I picked up a wall plug-in adapter. Plug 12V plug into adapter, plug adapter into wall, voila.

4) The Evil Big Box discounter had the laser LED pens back in stock! I bought one to replace the one I lost, and then I bought another that’s got a teeny gooseneck for the LED and a magnetic base. Cute and fun, tho’ maybe not all that functional. Still going to be good when I’m in teaching/demonstration mode.

5) A few weeks back, I mentioned I bought a huntin’ watch. And then I broke the band, which Casio no longer makes or has parts for. So today I bought a fishin’ watch (’cause I liked the color better, but I didn’t notice it had a traditional clasp and not the Velcro I like so well). Same module, two icons changed. The huntin’ watch, now bandless, goes into the rocketry range box to replace the cheapo failed stopwatch. The battery charge should last five or ten years in that application. And the huntin’ watch band, with its spare pin and retaining clip, goes into reserve against future disaster.

6) As recounted here, I’ve been saving some small rechargable batteries for launcher applications. I may yet follow through on that, but I’ve found another more functional, albeit more expensive solution: a Black & Decker “Start It” 450 Jump-Starter Air Compressor.

(Those of you holding your heads and moaning, “Oh, Bob…” just rope it in for a minute.)

I had a device like this, bought back in 1996 or so. I used it for inflating a few things, and then it pretty much sat untouched in the garage for a decade. In that time, of course, the battery lost its ability to hold charge, the lubrication in the compressor evaporated, giving it a truly hideous rattle in operation. (It still works, sort of.) So those all needed replacing. I’ve taken a step up with the replacement, with a battery that will start a car unassisted, and with power ports on it for 12V DC and 120V AC. Yup, it’s got a little inverter aboard for when out in the wilds and I just have to plug in a blow-dryer and fix my hair. Or something.

That kind of storage should be good for a long day of rocket flying at least. Plus I’ll need a decent inflator for the swimming pool in a month or two. Easy emergency jumpstarts for the Lady if I’m not around. This is all good. Alton Brown sings the praises of the multi-tasking device … I’m not as dedicated to the principle as he, but this is still a happy acquisition.

Today: laundry, dishes, chores, maybe some video, watch the MythBusters Alaska special. Tomorrow: maybe fly!

After reflection, I’m going to go with iWork ’08 ($100 for family licenses) instead of Microsoft Office Suite for Home & Student ($130). iWork will match up better with our needs and our available computer resources, even at the cost of some intercompatibility to MS Office 2007/2008 users (including myself at work).

And then I’ll need to pick up iLife ’06 ($60 on the used market for family licenses). (Can’t do iMovie ’08, ’cause it wants a G5 or Intel processor and we don’t have those, and iMovie is chiefly what I need to successfully manipulate home movies.)

And I need a new backup hard drive. Time Capsule is tempting, very tempting, but overkill. I just bought a new wireless hub, I don’t need another. I think a nice network hard drive with USB printer support that can talk Apple Bonjour will be the ticket. ($200+).

Glad the tax return arrives soon.

Well, I tried out DokuWiki, which is what my web host offers. It was nice enough, but not all that cool. And I’d've needed to argue with my web host to get access controls activated. More trouble than I want.

So I started casting about for alternatives, not really sure what I want to do with a wiki other than I know it would be terribly useful to me if I could figure that out.

And then I found TiddlyWiki.

Ho-lee cow. I can see this becoming a mighty absorber of my time, attention, and information. And I can just toss it into a basic protected directory in the website and have done with.

Happy St. George’s Day! Tho’ by the time I remembered to make this post, it was already over in England.

To Hart County (KY) 4-H Team 1 and to Dakota County (MN) 4-H Federation on qualifying for the Team America Rocketry Challenge finals of 2008! And also kudos to the Orange Acres BackBreakers (CA) 4-H Club, highly placed among the alternates.

Good luck to our 4-H rocketeers! Watch this space for the results of the May 19 competition, or visit http://www.rocketcontest.org.

If there was any doubt that I have totally recanted my abstention from adventure games, three deliveries this month would put the quash on that:

Larry Niven’s Ringworld: Roleplaying Adventure Beneath the Great Arch, the legendary Chaosium game set in Niven’s Known Space. Gads, but that print is tiny!

TORG: Roleplaying the Possibility Wars, the equally legendary genre-fracturing game from Greg Gorden and West End Games. This is probably going to be too complex for me to ever embrace the game, but I’m more interested in the Drama Deck anyway.

The third delivery carried supplements for FASA’s Star Trek: The Role-Playing Game: Star Trek IV Sourcebook Update, Federation Ship Recognition Manual, Klingon Ship Recognition Manual, and Romulan Ship Recognition Manual. ‘Nuff said.

All of the above are in remarkably good shape for their age, and should be very entertaining reading, whenever I decide to spend time on reading again.

I have only Guardians of Order’s BESM Fantasy Bestiary and the patiently awaited Girl Genius Roleplaying Game and Sourcebook on my game wish list. Oh, and players. Players would be good.