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DVD Ripping and Viewing in Windows Media Center

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:

1. Run Windows Media Center with the DVD in the drive and view the disc's metadata info.
2. Rip each DVD to its own subdirectory of a common directory.
3. 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)
4. 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.

Download copydvdinfo.ps1

Easy: Connect your RSS or Atom feed to Google Buzz

It was relatively easy, although still more difficult than I would have guessed, to hook my bespoke website's Atom feed up to Google Buzz. I already have a Google email account and associated profile so Buzz just showed up in my Gmail interface. Setting it up it offered to connect to my YouTube account or my Google Chat account but I didn't see an option to connect to an arbitrary RSS or Atom feed like I expected.

But of course hooking up an arbitrary Atom or RSS feed is documented. You hook it up in the same manner you claim a website as your own via the Google Profile (for some reason they want to ensure you own the feed connected to your Buzz account). You do this via Google's social graph API which uses XFN or FOAF. I used XFN by simply adding a link to my feed to my Google profile (And be sure to check the 'This is a profile page about me' which ensures that a rel="me" tag is added to the HTML on your profile. This is how XFN works.) And by adding a corresponding link in my feed back to my Google profile page with the following:

atom:link rel="me" href="http://www.google.com/profiles/david.risney"

So more difficult than I would have expected (more difficult than just an 'Add your feed' button and textbox) but not super difficult. And yet after reading this Buzz from DeWitt Clinton I feel better about opting-in to Google's Social API.

Cheap Multiplayer Tricks for New Super Mario Bros. Wii

The New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a great game. Its the fun of old school Mario with the addition of great graphics and the kind of multiplayer I've wanted for Mario since playing the original as a child: its got up to four player simultaneous cooperative multiplayer. I recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed Mario in the past. Watch this amazing video of level 1-3 you can unlock in the game.

As noted elsewhere, multiple players attempting to navigate platforms, grab power ups, and throw turtle shells creates new challenges but along with that there's new ways to be incredibly cheap.

Jumping Higher

A second player means a head one can jump on to reach higher locations. Jump on your friend's head at the apex of their jump while holding down the jump button yourself for maximum jumping. In the game you can also grab other players and hold them over your head. This is useful for reaching the top of the flagpole at the end of levels. On that same line, if the player you grab has a flying cap you can now use them to fly in the same manner you would use a flying block which makes it easy to get two players to the top of the finish flagpole if only one of you has a flying cap.

Power-Ups

Normal power-up blocks now spawn enough power-ups for everyone. A mushroom is spawned for each small player and full power-ups for the rest, except in the case everyone is small: then one of the power-ups is a full power-up. If there's two players and you're both small, the full power-up always jumps out of the block to the right. Some hidden power-up blocks only give out one power-up and in that case its a mushroom or not based on the player who hits the block - so be sure that a big player hits that if you have one.

Death & Bubbles

When a player dies but at least one other player lives the dead player comes back in a limbo bubble from which they must be released before they may play again. Because of this, in a tough spot you can send one player in and leave a second behind. If the first dies you don't lose your place in the level and the first comes back in a bubble ready to try again. For instance, if you're trying to get the last star coin in 2-1 which sits just above the abyss, one player can just jump to their death for it and as long as another player lives you've collected the coin. However you need not sacrifice your life to do this: you can press down and 'a' to force yourself into a bubble saving yourself from death. This is true in general as long as you have enough time to see your death coming. This is also useful if one player runs ahead to the right. The screen will expand a bit but then it will just move to the right following the player in the lead. Players left behind walls or now forced into lava pits will die unless they use the bubble.

Misc.

• If all players hit the ground at the same time from a ground pound it acts like hitting a pow block, killing the enemies on the screen.
• If you hold a player who has a projectile power over your head they can still use their power.
• Bubbles can be popped by hitting them with your fire or ice projectiles as well as thrown shells or blocks.
• All players get the extra lives from anyone collecting 100 coins or finishing a level with more than 7 enemies on the screen.