Geekery and the Shovel
I took today off and all the school holidays (today's not really a holiday but teacher inservice) in the case that Kristin has to work and I have a pile of Annual Leave saved up but then K and the Grrl are over at her cousin's house most of the day. So we went to breakfast together and they dropped me home and I've been futzing with videos and shovelin' snow all day.
I've been variably enjoying/being pissed off by figuring out how to put video files on my iPod. The Handbrake app I found for my Mac works great for ripping DVDs. I ripped a bunch of videos by The Cure and Pixies and two whole concert vids of U2 and Siouxsie & the Banshees. I was also able to download a few clips from Limewire that are already formatted for the iPod, which is nice. Not a lot there in my particular tastes, but I found a few. You can convert from Quicktime easily with iTunes but .mpg doesn't include the sound. Buh. I hate how complicated it can be to work with video files.
I bought NatNanny for Katy's computer. The other day she showed me how she found the Doctor Who BBC site and pictures of K9 (whom she adores) by just typing "doctor who" in the address bar and Firefox went straight to the BBC site. Which is cool but I can just see her employing this method on some other topic and being confronted with all manner of inappropriate stuff. So I put NetNanny on and configured it to block adult content and violence and stuff but I didn't put it on the highest level of restriction because I don't like to be a censor so much and I want her to learn how to use the net and I believe it's up to us to keep tabs on her online stuff and to guide her. It's just nice to have the backup of the app. It also hijacks the search function so your searches go through their filters, which is nice. It doesn't work with Firefox but that's cool cause you can make Yahooligans your default search engine and make the home page something kidsafe. We don't try to shelter her too much and we talk openly about whatever she asks about but I really don't want her to see like rotten.com or porn yet. I love how innocent she is now.
The city came along and plowed our road which is great except for the big f'n berms they leave in the driveway. I shoveled it out this morning and we all went to breakfast and when we came back home we discovered they left us another one! Grr!! So since I was just being dropped off, I did the shovelin' and tried to take it in stride. Freakin' snow.
I'm watching and preparing to rip a video of this Japanese singer/songwriter/musician Sheena Ringo, or Ringu Shiina as she may be called in Japan. She's so cute and such a talented musician. Not your typical jpop.
I've been variably enjoying/being pissed off by figuring out how to put video files on my iPod. The Handbrake app I found for my Mac works great for ripping DVDs. I ripped a bunch of videos by The Cure and Pixies and two whole concert vids of U2 and Siouxsie & the Banshees. I was also able to download a few clips from Limewire that are already formatted for the iPod, which is nice. Not a lot there in my particular tastes, but I found a few. You can convert from Quicktime easily with iTunes but .mpg doesn't include the sound. Buh. I hate how complicated it can be to work with video files.
I bought NatNanny for Katy's computer. The other day she showed me how she found the Doctor Who BBC site and pictures of K9 (whom she adores) by just typing "doctor who" in the address bar and Firefox went straight to the BBC site. Which is cool but I can just see her employing this method on some other topic and being confronted with all manner of inappropriate stuff. So I put NetNanny on and configured it to block adult content and violence and stuff but I didn't put it on the highest level of restriction because I don't like to be a censor so much and I want her to learn how to use the net and I believe it's up to us to keep tabs on her online stuff and to guide her. It's just nice to have the backup of the app. It also hijacks the search function so your searches go through their filters, which is nice. It doesn't work with Firefox but that's cool cause you can make Yahooligans your default search engine and make the home page something kidsafe. We don't try to shelter her too much and we talk openly about whatever she asks about but I really don't want her to see like rotten.com or porn yet. I love how innocent she is now.
The city came along and plowed our road which is great except for the big f'n berms they leave in the driveway. I shoveled it out this morning and we all went to breakfast and when we came back home we discovered they left us another one! Grr!! So since I was just being dropped off, I did the shovelin' and tried to take it in stride. Freakin' snow.
I'm watching and preparing to rip a video of this Japanese singer/songwriter/musician Sheena Ringo, or Ringu Shiina as she may be called in Japan. She's so cute and such a talented musician. Not your typical jpop.