I have a stupid song/tune stuck in my head. It is annoying. I was in an IRC channel and a gal named Ketsueki and another gal named cowy (that isn’t their real names, no one in their right mind would call their child cowy) started talking about a song. I had no idea what they were on about. Then beaming over Skype comes the song. I listen to the annoying song on Skype. I then google the song and found it in YouTube.

I listened to it and watched the video that was with it. It is annoyingly mindboggling and it is now stuck in my head. I can’t get it out and I can’t stop listening to it. Thanks a lot girls! I hope you are happy for brainwashing me with sillyness.  I then went to find the lyrics. Weirdly enough, a blog post that I came across with the lyrics had connections to Peppery, a friend from another IRC network. The internet isn’t such a small place after all But we all know that is not true.

The song is really weird. “Less than three, you love me, Typing out my fantasy. Meet me here on IRC, L-O-L-O-L.” When I first read the lyrics I though that they seemed normal in a slightly geeky way. After thinking about it a little too much, I now think it it is about a girl talking about having cyber sex with her boyfriend online. I think I really missed the target on this one, I can’t help my “abstract” thinking. Please tell me that the song is not about cybering.

Now its your turn to get it stuck in your head if you haven’t already had it in there already. Enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHzqMa9hZew

Yesterday, the premiere of Tekzilla got released. Tekzilla is a technology related show hosted by Jessica Corbin and Patrick Norton. The show delivers product reviews, computer help, tech tips plus do it yourself projects. The show has everything tech, from iPods to camcorders, HD to the Internet, anything and everything.

I initially was disappointed because this show was replacing one of my old favourites, InDigital. This tainted what I though about it and went into watching the first episode expecting it to suck. Now that I have seen it, I don’t think that it was that InDigital was ending, I don’t think that it was because something was replacing it, it was because I will miss the host I have grown to love over the past two years. I will miss Hahn and Wil.

Anyway, the episode blew me away. I loved it, really loved it. There is not much I can say about this show but you have to check it out. I do believe Revision3 has a winner here and I can’t wait to see it grow as time goes on. I would hope that we do see special guests on the show to make it more lively and interesting, and no, I’m not saying Patrick and Jessica are boring or will become boring, far from it actually.

The first episode was basic. They showed a great review on a video on demand box, they had some great tips on making better looking videos by showing camera techniques, they showed a battery hack to use a big 12 battery to power your handheld devices and they also showed you a nice piece of software for RAM diagnostics. You really have to check out the show yourself to witness how great it is. If I was rating this show, five dragons out of five dragons.

I listen to a few podcasts, about five weekly ones and a daily one. Most of the audio podcasts are done by the TWiT network. I also watch a few video podcasts, ones brought by Revision3. I have been watching and listening to these shows for a couple of years now. In the past years, I have never had to say goodbye to one of these shows that have become a part of my routine, part of my life. On Tuesday, a podcast that I had watched since its third episode, released its final episode ever.

InDigital is a show that looks at and reviews gadgets and products. I loved watching the show, it was very informative and made me want some of the products, and made me not want to even touch others. The hosts were very respected and all round great people. They had three awesome hosts, Hahn Choi, Jessica Corbin and Wil Wheaton, and I am going to miss them heaps.

Losing a show is a hard thing to do. Watching the flashbacks and everything brought tears to one eyes. I was not read to bid farewell to this excellent show. This show definitally got shut down before its time. It still had heaps of potential to grow and it is unfortunate that it wasn’t given a fair chance for survival. Revision3 gave the producer, Hahn, the options of moving the show to San Fransisco or ending it. He choose to end it because he didn’t want to move. I don’t understand why they can’t keep it the same as they had been doing.

Anyway, farewell my friend, I will miss you. Revision3 are replacing the show with something similar which will premiere tomorrow. I don’t know if I will like the show but hopefully it can fill some of the hole that Revision3 left after it pulled InDigital. :’(

Ten days ago, I posted complaining about VLC and one of the point mentioned was the bad quality of the video, more specifically, HD video.

I watched a H.264 HD video. I was disappointed with the quality becuase it was not as good as the quality Quicktime offered. It was extremely apparent when the podcast, Diggnation, displayed websites which were crystal clear and readable in Quicktime, but were slightly pixelated and harder to read in VLC.

I now retract hat I have said. The reason the quality didn’t look as good as it did in Quicktime is due to the fact that Quicktime opens the video in its original size whereas VLC Player scales the video down so all the controls and everything fits on the screen.

Quicktime makes the player adjust to the size of the video, in this case, HD Diggnation is 720p (1280×720). The resolution of my monitor is 1280×800 and what ends up happening is the player controls get chopped off. For me to control it, I have to move the player so the topbar goes offscreen. If I want to exit the video, I have to then drag it down. I can always put it in fullscreen and not worry about it but sometimes I want to do other things or want to be notified of events in the taskbar.

VLC doesn’t let it happen. It scales the video down so the player controls fit on the screen. The disadvantage is that you get loss of quality and a little pixelation due to it scaling the video down. This thing was, I didn’t realize thing until I accidentally put it into fullscreen and found that the quality was perfect and the pixelation gone. This is great, but I am a little disappointed in it. VLC didn’t tell me that it had scaled it down so everything would fit on the screen. When opening a video that is bigger than the real estate it has to work with, it should either prompt me and ask what to do, scale down or go fullscreen or otherwise alert me on what it is doing. Another thing is that 1:1 original size isn’t the original size, it has scaled it down and hasn’t told me. 1:1 original should mean that, the original size, and it should do that regardless of the space or at least give some sort of message.

I don’t think VLC is perfect but I have to admit, it’s pretty darn close. I suppose I am just a fussy person that wants things perfect and other people wouldn’t have issues with it. I will give VLC the award for best alternative player, especially for Quicktime, I have given up on that.

The other day when I tried to open a movie in Quicktime, my computer crashed. Quicktime is a frustrating piece of software for me, it doesn’t do video very well for me. It can play video on an external source, whether its a USB Drive or a Network Drive or a Memory Stick of some description. The only thing it can’t do it play videos that are saved onto my hard drive. I just don’t get it and why, 6 months later, it hasn’t bean fixed.

After some searching on the internet, apparently Apple blames nVidia for a bad driver for its Serial ATA driver and nVidia blames Apples bad software. No one seems to want to take responsibility for this and it is a pain in the arse for me and other people with this problem. People have been somewhat forced to use Quicktime alternatives. I eventually gave up and decided to take that route too.

I downloaded VLC Player and it pissed me off from the word go. It played video fine but it done annoying things that pissed me off. First off it made itself the default for all video formats. It would have been nice if it asked me first and not just presumed that I would want it like that. Trying to get it back to my original configuration was a pain in the neck and resulted in my uninstalling it and fixing settings individually to get it back exactly to the way it was.

After reinstalling it, I watched a H.264 HD video. I was disappointed with the quality becuase it was not as good as the quality Quicktime offered. It was extremely apparent when the podcast, Diggnation, displayed websites which were crystal clear and readable in Quicktime, but were slightly pixelated and harder to read in VLC. Another tedious thing is the volume control in VLC which is not simple to use and also thanks to Vista, makes it animated, which can be distracting when watching video at times.

Everyone is going to blame Vista and say thats what I get for being an early adopter, or a user in general. Yes I accept that but that is not going to make me switchback to XP. My XP days are over and I am only looking forward now. On the Quicktime problem, I have two options, put my videos on an external drive and play them from there in Quicktime, or play them with VLC but suffer because if degraded quality. I guess I’m gunna have to live with an annoyance either way so it’s whatever one is more convenient so VLC it is, unfortunately!

UPDATE: I have made a retraction to one of the things mentioned in this post. You can find it here.