I’ve been following the fight against leukemia waged by brave little Esten Maxwell, son of local musician Tom Maxwell. Tom posted today about Esten’s recent visit to the sedation clinic. Its a very emotional read.
Get well soon, Esten! You’ve got a lot of fans out here on the Internets.
I love the marketing campaign for Raleigh Wide Open III, announcing the grand opening of the new convention center September 5th and 6th. The signs hanging from Fayetteville Street lightposts are hilarious. They say “Thou art now in Funky Towne,” “Get down with thy bad self,” “Get thine merriment on,” among others.
Very clever!
Here are the commands I’m using for importing DVDs into the iPod. Shown is the script for the Muppets DVD. It requires the libdvdcss libraries to be added, as well as the MP4Box app. MP4Box takes the mencoder-encoded file and stamps it with the appropriate iPod bits to make it show.
GUEST="Vincent_Price"; time mencoder dvd://8 -dvd-device /dev/scd0 -sws 9 -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -vf scale=320:240 -ovc x264 -x264encopts bitrate=1381:vbv_maxrate=1500:vbv_bufsize=2000:nocabac:me=umh:trellis=1:level_idc=30:global_header:threads=2:pass=1:turbo -oac faac -faacopts mpeg=4:object=2:br=160:raw -channels 2 -srate 48000 -o Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 && MP4Box -add Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 output/Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 && [ -f output/Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 ] && rm Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 && echo "done."
Also see this helpful Ubuntu forum post for other cool tools.
I’m glad Western North Carolina will be getting a good drink from Tropical Storm/Depression Fay. Lord knows they need it. As for me, though, I’m still sitting on 300+ gallons of rainwater, so I reluctantly removed the downspout hose from my tank when the first drops came down this morning.
I fiddled with my new tank pump this weekend in an effort to test it out. Turns out the 1″ suction hose I bought had the threads stripped on one connector. After much time spent patiently threading and rethreading the connector into the pump I finally got it on there properly. By that time it was already dark outside, so the pump will wait another week or two when it is dry again.
I have to say I’ve been very pleased with this August’s weather. It hasn’t been baking hot for the first summer in a while. Of course, we paid that price earlier this summer but even that didn’t last too long. We’ve also had reliable rain this month, which is a welcome change.
Yesterday was the first day of school and this morning I’m on my way to a full-blown cold. Coincidence?
Dave Barry described perfectly what its like to catch a cab in Beijing. I took many cab rides that turned out exactly like this.
If Jamaica’s Red Stripe beer wasn’t so bad ganja might not have become so popular.
Thus, we might have Red Stripe to thank for reggae music.
Reading this account of no handrails in the Chinese Olympic stadiums brought me back to my days spent dodging open wells and dangling telephone wires in that oh-so-safety-conscious country known as China.
Want to know what its like being a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver? Set your interweb viewer thingamabobs to the blog of N.C. Rep. Ty Harrell. Ty’s promising a behind-the-scenes account of the goings-on in Denver. Ty is also Twittering as TyHarrell.
Thanks for taking us along, Ty! I look forward to your posts.
Wow, am I ready for bed already! Its been a very busy weekend, to say the least.
Friday afternoon, Kelly’s parents arrived to spend the weekend with us. We all went out to Royal India for dinner Friday evening. The next morning Kelly and I fixed breakfast for everyone before we headed downtown to watch the house moves.
The first house was already across the street and the second was just crossing the road by the time we got there around 10:30. They didn’t move much for the next hour, though we were there for one spectacular tire-blowing. Bam! That thing blew up like a bomb! Of course, the blown tire meant all the work had to grind to a halt while the tire was replaced. Having the patience of a saint must be a job requirement of house movers.
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