CD Burnination and Sweet Dreams.

Was planning to tape Enterprise today and watch it with taxlady, but we somehow didn't set up the taping right. In the 3-4 months the VCR was "broken" we seem to have forgotten how to get it to record a show on time. Last week we were sure it WASN'T taping Enterprise, but it did. This week we were sure it WAS taping, and it wasn't.

Anyway, now that I have a niftoid DVD player, I just downloaded the episode from Da IntarweB and burned it to an (erasable) VCD. It all went quite smoothly, although I didn't expect it to. See, earlier today, I had downloaded two episodes of NOVA that I had wanted to watch, but which I missed due to getting the day wrong.  Neither were in the correct VCD format, but NERO is usually happy enough (if kinda slow) to do the conversion. The first went fine, but the second crashed NERO.

I tried to watch the second episode on my machine, and it seemed intact except that the codec pegged my machine at 100% and still gave a jerky playback with out-of-synch sound. Still, it could decode, so I should be able to convert it, right? The trouble was, VirtualDub gave an "Unknown Error" on frame 0 of the file, while TMPGEnc either refused to open the file or (sometimes!) would open it fine but complain that the entire contents were blank.

I tried downloading and installing the latest version of the XviD codec, but it didn't change anything. Finally in desperation I uninstalled all of my viewers (Quicktime, Real player, Movie Player Classic) and all of my Codecs (Quicktime Alternate, Real Alternate, Movie Player Classic, DviX, XviD, and K-lite Mega Codec Pack), and downloaded and installed the latest Mega Codec Pack (with included viewers) and told it I wanted the works.

5 minutes later, both TMPGEnc and VirtualDub were happy with the Nova episodes, and I discovered I could play them on my machine without pegging the CPU. Anyway, I gave TMPGEnc the task of converting the second episode while I found a CD-RW I was willing to wipe, and burned the Enterprise on it.

I then spent some time trying to debug a (minor) problem with email on my mail server, but my brain refused to cooperate. Anyway, while I was doing that the conversion finished and I told NERO to do the burnination thing. The CD-RW's are only 4X, so I decided to type this up while it was going on, and it just finished.

So now, I gots several hours of TV burned to CD, but I think I'll wait for tomorrow to watch them, because I am suddenly very sleepy.

Good Night All.

Awake Again.

Had a bit of trouble falling asleep last night, but at least I slept well and now I is awake again. I dreamt dreamy dreams which varied from the erotic to the action/adventure style.

And now, its time to wake up and get ready for the arrival of tepintzin in a few hours. Its nice having guests!