Hypn.za.net | @hypn

Writing DVDs (spring cleaning?)

I spent the morning sorting out all the stuff on my computer – I wrote close 20 DVDs, and now have 43 GB more disk space free, but what a mission.

I’m in the process of ripping all of the DVDs I own to “.avi” so I can just watch them off my hard drive, but it turns out I own 30 DVDs… I thought it was closer to 10 – who knew I was that rich. Anyway, I’m having second thoughts about ripping them because of the disk space, and time, it would take. On the other hand, it saves having to look for the DVD I want to watch (and frees up my DVD drive, if I need to use DVDs/CDs while watching).

I haven’t ripped the last few music CDs I’ve bought to MP3 either, so I spent some time doing that – I own something like 40 CDs… which is quite frightening. Once they’re ripped I normalize them – so it’s a fairly lengthy process in all. What’s ironic is that I’m going to be backing up all my MP3s to DVD (despite having the original CDs), so that I wont need to rip them all again should anything happen to my hard drive – so I guess I’m really just backing up the time it took to rip them.

I still have another 10 DVDs or so to write, possible more – not to mention the DVDs I need to write for other people. I’m considering hiring a DVD-writing-slave to do all this, and all my backing up, for me.

Stupid computers, life would be so much simpler without them. So much to listen to, so much to watch, so much to read, so much to backup.

Okay, that’s the end of my rant. At least I’m (mostly) harddrive-crash-safe, and have more disk space. The weather outside is awesome, I should’ve spent the day at the beach.

Incredible Video Editting!

I didn’t think much of these videos by their titles, but they’re insane.

The first shows they’re able to easily cut objects out of a video – as if they were filmed on a blue/green screen – without having to cut out the object in every frame. It’s called the “Interactive Video Cutout“.

The second shows how videos can be enhanced by using photos. Basically photos are higher quality, and thus more detailed, than video footage. By combining the two, they’re able to “upgrade” the video quality. This is the really insane one, personally it seems too amazing to be true, but anyway: “Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene” (more info here).

Now if only that software was available for download… I would spend hours playing with it.

New Theme

I FINALLY got around to changing the theme on my blog… I guess I was kinda inspired by last month’s webstats – so I may as well give my visitors something slightly more pretty to look at.

It’s a modified version of a free theme, and I got Michelle to make the new header – thanks Michelle! :D

Gaming news

1) There’s a new “Wolfenstein” game coming out, hi-res trailer here.

2) There’s a “co-op” mod for Doom3, which is lots of fun. Download here or visit the site.

3) Apparently Red Alert 3‘s minimum system requirements (summarized) are : Windows XP, 2.0GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 6GB disk space, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 or ATI Radeon X1800 video card (and sound and DVD drive).

4) Team Fortress 2 still rocks – oh wait, that’s not new ;)

TF2: Two awesome Spy vidoes

I found two cool Spy videos yesterday, but don’t have the right plugins installed to post them on my blog properly, so you’re just going to have to click the links below to watch them:

YouTube – Team Fortress 2 – Don’t meet the Spy! (Original English)

That Pineapple is a spy! – TF2 video

I played some TF2 as spy after watching those videos… but I sucked really bad :| I blame it on low fps, and high ping.

TF2 Lego Sentry

A TF2 Sentry made out of Lego… what more do I say, other than “WOW!” :D

See original page here.

Magic The Gathering

There’s supposed to be a Magic The Gathering “pre-release” (for Eventide) this weekend. I already had other plans, and couldn’t find any information for it in my area, so I didn’t go. It’s been quite a while since I’ve played Magic The Gathering, but I really miss it :| It’s also a pitty it’s darn expensive these days.

These cards have absolutely nothing to do with the new set, but they make for an awesome combination ;)

Anyone care for a million Devouring Strossuses (or is that Devouring Strossii?) – you wont need it after that, but throw in a “Black Market” and you’ve got a million mana to follow up with some burn.

Nintendo Wall Graphics

Ooh… I want Nintendo Wall Graphics!

TF2: first kill with reflected flare

Over on TeamFortress2Fort.com, Scorch posted a screen shot of the first kill with a reflected flare (that I’ve seen anyway). What makes it even better is that it was the pyro who shot the flare that he killed.

In other words: a pyro shot a flare at him at the exact moment he used his “compression blast” (he was also pyro), so the flare was sent back and hit it’s sender, who then died. There’s even a little icon showing how the guy was killed. Impressive :)

There original thread about this is here.

MenuetOS

Back when I was in college (2001-2002), a friend of mine showed me an operating system that boots off a stiffy disk. Now I know you get single-stiffy-disk sized linux distros, but this isn’t a command-line operating system… it has a full colour interface, with transparency, can run multiple applications, etc.

Anyway, at the time it was rather impressive. So I decided to Google it the other day, and found that the project’s still going (and it’s still only 1 stiffy disk big), and has had lots of extra functionality added. It may not have much practical use, but it’s worth checking out.

(from the site) “MenuetOS is an Operating System in development for the PC written entirely in 32/64 bit assembly language, and released under the License. It supports 32/64 bit x86 assembly programming for smaller, faster and less resource hungry applications.”

Link: MenuetOS