Self-Titled

I’ve cobbled together a pretty good tool for transcoding video in pretty much any format into the MPEG-4 format that iPods play. You have to have the VLC media player installed because it does the actual transcoding. So in other words, I’ve researched a program that was already out there and made an easy wrapper script. Damn I’m smart. Yay modularity! Seriously though, there aren’t a lot of guides out there that are easy to follow. Maybe someone will find this useful. It works great on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10.

Here’s my bash script:


#!/bin/bash
extension=`echo "$1" | awk -F . '{print $NF}'`
name=`basename "$1" ."$extension"`
vlc -vvv "$name.$extension" \
--sout "#transcode{vcodec=mp4v, \
vb=1024, \
scale=1, \
acodec=mp4a, \
ab=128, \
channels=2}:standard{access=file, \
url=$name.mp4}" \
--aspect-ratio "4:3" \
--sout-transcode-width 360 \
--sout-transcode-height 240 \
--sout-transcode-fps 30 \
2>/dev/null


Congress is concerned that peer-to-peer networks may make users susceptible to identity theft. Apparently, some users share their sensitive information with others and then get upset when their identities are stolen. That’s Darwin at his finest, in my opinion.

Why does Congress have to fix things that aren’t broken? Users have to explicitly choose to publish files to the network, be it the web or a peer-to-peer network. What the peer-to-peer program shares by default is irrelevant; the burden is on the user to understand what they’re doing. Your computer and your internet connection give you the tools to send anything and everything to everyone else. If you don’t want to share everything, then don’t. Educate yourself. If you’re going to play the game, you have to know the rules. I have no sympathy for those whose files were used against them. I always check what files are being shared and so should everyone else.

I should also note that the article incorrectly characterizes all peer-to-peer protocols as having this “problem.” Some peer-to-peer networks exist only to share specific files, like BitTorrent. No one accidentally seeds their bank statement with BitTorrent.

Wine burn is the point where you’ve drunk enough wine that your mouth feels dry and wines taste the same. I had that today. Yay wine tasting!

Programming languages vary across a spectrum of expressiveness. By expressiveness, I mean the ability and ease by which you can express something in a particular language. For example, programming languages having closures are widely considered to be more expressive, and hence more powerful, than languages that lack this feature.

I wonder if natural (human) languages also vary in expressive power and if so how this affects your thinking and personality. If you grew up learning the most expressive natural language of all, would that make you smarter than those who didn’t? Would it make you more predisposed to like certain things or enter certain careers? Maybe certain classes of ideas are easier to think about in certain natural languages, much like some programming languages are better suited to certain problem domains than others. Could this contribute to why some geographical areas are known for being good at a particular thing? Imagine having to learn Finnish because it was the best fit for thinking about ideas in your field of study or work. Imagine trying to invent a natural language to improve your thinking about your field of study of work.