Patrick Desjardins is like a real life Connor Prikkel from For the Win. Quits his job to
focus on his takeover of the virtual economy of the Star Wars MMO to make real money. Yes he was a Dark Jedi Master.
2011 Jun 20, 11:25A cautionary tale in chart form: lesson is make sure you can always upgrade your hashing algorithm or don't have security dependencies on hashing algorithms.referencehashencryptionsecuritytabletechnicalhumor
I've just got a new media center PC connected directly to my television with lots of HD space and so I'm ripping a bunch of my DVDs to the PC so I don't have to fuss with the physical media. I'm
ripping with DVD Rip, viewing the results in Windows 7's Windows Media Center after turning on the WMC DVD Library, and using a powershell script I wrote to copy over cover art and metadata.
My powershell script follows. To use it you must do the following:
Run Windows Media Center with the DVD in the drive and view the disc's metadata info.
Rip each DVD to its own subdirectory of a common directory.
The name of the subdirectory to which the DVD is ripped must have the same name as the DVD name in the metadata. An exception to this are characters that aren't allowed in Windows paths (e.g.
<, >, ?, *, etc)
Run the script and pass the path to the common directory containing the DVD rips as the first parameter.
Running WMC and viewing the DVD's metadata forces WMC to copy the metadata off the Internet and cache it locally. After playing with Fiddler and reading this blog post on WMC metadata I made the following script that copies metadata and cover art from the WMC cache to the corresponding
DVD rip directory.
An excellent movie I'd never heard of. An entertaining and humorous sci-fi indie romance comedy. It stars Emma Caulfield (who I recognize as Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) who obsesses over
her timer, an implanted device that counts down to when she'll meet the love of her life. Thematically its similar to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which similarly adds a scifi device to
society in order to examine the value of failed relationships on a persons life.
2010 May 10, 8:59Iggy Pop interviews Shepard Fairey, including his Obama HOPE poster and AP lawsuit:
"... but the American public is generally pretty superficial, so an image like that just allows them to project whatever limited idea they have onto it. Obviously, not everyone is like that—I
actually think there were a lot of people who were bummed by the image because they felt it was shallow propaganda."
"If I spend time conceiving and making a piece of art and somebody else sees that it has market value and replicates it in order to steal part of my market, then that’s not cool. But the way I make
art—the way a lot of people make art—is as an extension of language and communication, where references are incredibly important. It’s about making a work that is inspired by something preexisting
but changes it to have a new value and meaning that doesn’t in any way take away from the original—and, in fact, might provide the original with a second life or a new audience." artlegallawipshepard-faireyobeyinterview
2010 Apr 21, 1:47So... There's Downfall a 2004 film about the final days of Hitler's life. Then folks take the most dramatic scene and parody it with new subtitles having Hitler yell about various things like his
cell phone or Burning Man. It becomes a meme and meta Downfall parodies show up with Hitler yelling about the Downfall parodies. Now the studio producing the film has sent DMCA takedown notices to
Youtube and many of the videos are disappearing. In response is a new Downfall parody in which Hitler issues DMCA notices to Youtube...censorshiphitlerhumorcopyrightdmcaefflegalyoutubevideofairusememewebinternettechnical
2010 Mar 12, 10:03Eschuk has fairly detailed strategy for last person on Earth scenario. Humrous comments follow.
itdest1983: "I hate to be a debbie downer and question this incredibly awesome and very intelligent plan, but my question is: Why? Other than sustaining life simply to avoid death, why? ..."