Creative journalism

Oops, an example of creative journalism was caught red-handed this week.

How much of this goes on, unchecked?

"Look! We made an accurate, silicon model of an elephant's foetus. We used a mixture of ultrascans and computer graphics to simulate how it might look for real."

"Wow, real ultrasounds of an elephant foetus!"

"Cool, the first, close ups of an elephant in the womb! Amazing. Tiny cameras, you say... inserted into the rectum?"

"Stunning! Live animal foetuses from cameras mounted in the womb. Crazy... people are going to love this!"

Patch for mythframes

This patch modifies mythframes to handle big files.

--- mythframes.c.orig   2006-11-08 19:13:59.000000000 +0000 
+++ mythframes.c        2006-11-08 19:03:44.000000000 +0000 
@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@
   typedef struct seektable_entry
  { 
-   long long file_offset; 
+   double long file_offset;
     int keyframe_number;
  } seektable_entry;

Patch for mkmovie

The following patch removes aspect ratio options from mencoder which causes it to bomb out.

These were some modifications that were needed to get things running on my setup.

--- /usr/bin/mkmovie    2006-11-08 19:00:23.000000000 +0000
+++ mkmovie     2006-11-06 21:15:32.000000000 +0000
@@ -329,7 +329,7 @@
        } while (($retval != 0) and not($stoprun));
        $command = "mencoder -idx " . $files . " -ovc lavc " .
                " -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate=" . $vbr . ":keyint=" .
-               $keyint . ":aspect=" . $aspect .
+               $keyint .
                " -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:cbr=" . $abr .
                ":padding=0 -o " . $currfile .
                " -noskip";
@@ -398,7 +398,7 @@
                        $currfile = "seg" . $segcounter . "-" . $$ . ".avi";
                        $command = "mencoder -idx " . $input . " -ovc lavc " .
                                " -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate=" . $vbr . ":keyint=" .
-                               $keyint . ":aspect=" . $aspect .
+                               $keyint .
                                " -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:cbr=" . $abr .
                                ":padding=0 -o " . $currfile .
                                " -ss " . $startpos ." -endpos " . $endpos . " -noskip";
@@ -679,7 +679,7 @@

        $command = "mencoder -mf w=" . $width . ":h=" . $height .
                ":fps=" . $fps . " -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate=" . $vbr .
-               ":keyint=" . $keyint . ":aspect=" . $aspect .
+               ":keyint=" . $keyint .
                " -o " . $single . " mf://" . $png;
        do {
                unlink $single;

Sun's Project Blackbox

Recently Sun announced a new Project called, "Blackbox".

Basically it's a rapid deployment datacentre - a black, Sun branded, shipping container full of racks and servers that will take up to 8Gs of impact shock. They'll even paint it in camouflage colours in case you need to hide it. ;)

I wonder what the local council would think If I had one of these taking up a parking spot or two in front of the flat.