French Toast

The MMC meet for their monthly breakfast event here in Aiken at the Sugar Magnolia Cafe (not to be confused with Sugar Magnolia’s Cafe in Lompoc, CA) and we got a nice turn out of 10 people in 7 cars, 5 Miatas and a Sebring (which counts as two Miatas), a much nicer turn out than the November one there which was just Donna and I.

Frakking Sony DVD player. I spent most of the late morning and early afternoon trying to get William & Mary burned on a DVD. No matter what I tried, none of the 4 discs produced would do anything but play the No Public Display warning, the production company logo and the “pirating is stealing” PSA before halting and giving an out of region error message.

All the forums posts I found on the net said that the programs I was using should take care of the Region Coding. Then I searched for a way to set the Sony DVD player to region free and found that there were no sure fire way of doing it with my model, but there were a couple of ways that I could try that worked on similar models. Ha, close, but oh so frustrating.

I’m not sure what prompted me, but about 3 o’clock I took one of the, what I thought were toast, discs into the other room and tried it in the old JVC player. It worked perfectly….

The JVC was exiled to the back bedroom a few months ago because it was refusing to play DVDs or lock up with increasing regularity. We bought a Sony DVP-NS57P for $40 at Walmart to replace it and it has been great; until now. I’ve moved the JVC back into the living room, now the two of them sit on top of each other in the cabinet ready for anything.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 100

DVD Fun

Thanks Mark.

  1. Take the William & Mary Region 2 DVD in PAL format and run it through DVD Decrypter to copy it to your hard drive.
  2. Run it through VobBlanker to change it to from PAL to NTSC and save it to a new directory.
  3. Run those files through DVD Shrink 3.2, squishing the files (so they will fit on a single layer DVD) and save those to another directory.
  4. Finally burn this last directory to a blank DVD +r using ImageBurn.

Two hours in front of the computer and the DVD doesn’t play in the living room, the Region Code is still intact. I’ve got to delve into the process and find out where I strip the region code…tomorrow.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 100

Martin Clunes

We have been watching Doc Martin, a British TV show, about a stuck up surgeon from London who gives up his practice because of a phobia of blood to become a GP in a small village in Cornwall. Most of the humor comes from the fact that the doctor has zero interpersonal skills and is entirely incapable of telling anything but the truth and usually in a scientific/doctorly way which is usually unpleasant to the listener. Nearly all the remaining laughs are generated by some of the totally odd inhabitants of the smal seaside village, with just a few left over for the budding romance between the Doc (with which he has no experience at) and the school’s headmistress.

They have filmed 3 Series of the show consisting of 6, 8 and 7 episodes each. The first Series we rented from Netflix, but numbers 2 & 3 haven’t been released in the US as of yet, so we had to turn to Nigel who had copies available in the boot of his Vauxhall Vectra saloon that he could sell us. We are now down to the last two episodes of Series 3 and we will be finished. For now, they are working on a Series 4 that is supposed to start filming in May of this year, so maybe by the end of 2009 we will be able to watch those shows too.

Doc Martin stars Martin Clunes who is proof positive that acting matters more than looks to the English. While not what you would call ugly, more like eccentric, he won’t be making the leap to leading man in Hollywood soon. We have seen him a couple of times before, in William & Mary, a romantic comedy TV show and in Saving Grace, which ended up inspiring the Doc Martin TV show.

William & Mary ran for 3 Series and of course only the first two were released in Region 1 (the US and others). We ran through those 12 shows thanks to Netflix, but the last Series wasn’t available, even from Nigel, so we ended up buying the DVDs from Amazon in the UK. I was going to buy just Series 3, but a box set with all three Series were available for only a couple quid more, so I went for the set. Now I have to do some digital magic and rip the DVDs to my computer and stripping the region code. Then I have to burn them back to some recordable DVDs while converting them from PAL to NTSC. Wish me luck.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 100

Really Expensive Pedometer

Over the years to keep track of how far she walks Donna has tried umpteen different pedometers. We started cheap (because how technical can they be?), like six bucks. Well those puppies aren’t too accurate, it really seemed to matter that it was on a certain point of your waist to get a decent reading, but a lot of times even if you put it right where it was yesterday, it wouldn’t work. We tried doubling our price point with no improvement. We have even tried one that was like $25 and the results were just as disappointing.

She has tried them while at work, walking around the block and hiking in the woods. Occasionally the mileage recorded seemed like it might be close, but mostly it was way, way, off. The work tally would be interesting because she really does do a lot of traveling around the plant in her job. The after work mileage is easily computed because we can use the bicycle computer to replicate the route, but the woods walks are harder. The map we use is marked with a grid and the lines are 1000′ apart, so she has been estimating the mileage by approximating the windy trails to the grids covered and dividing by 5280. Not too accurate.

The other day when we came out from our walk in the woods she said, “I wish there was a better way to see how far we have walked.” I said, “I know one sure way.” “What?” “A GPS,” I replied.

Our Garmin eTrex Venture? HC arrived today.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 100

Seperated At Birth?

Every time I watch LOST and I see Miles Straum I think he looks like that guy with all the kids. Every time I catch a few glimpses of Jon & Kate Plus 8 I think how much he looks like that weird psychic guy on LOST. (I’m not the only one) But as I went searching for photos with them in similar poses, I now see that they really don’t look much alike at all.

Windows 7 is gone. Booted into it, downloaded a copy of EasyBCD and used it to remove the Vista-like bootloader, booted back into XP and formatted the partition it resided on.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 100

Windows 7 May Not Be For Me

Nothing really wrong with the interface and it seems that Microsoft took the complaints (or at least that Hi I’m A Mac commercial) of those annoying and prolific “Are You Sure You Want To Do That?” dialog boxes seriously, but I think I have a video driver issue. Try any full screen video and it locks up, not just Ctl+Alt+Del locked up either, but hold down the power button for 5 seconds to shut it off locked up. The Netflix streaming movie viewer didn’t even have to get to full screen, just a mere attempt to load and it was reboot city.

I thought an updated video driver might help, but Dell only offers a video driver in the XP flavor for my laptop (it’s what came preloaded from the factory.)

I wonder what I have to do to undo the installation without having to reload XP all over again. Maybe I can just format the partition and edit the boot loader file? Off to Google to see…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 100

Sunday Breakfast

We were originally intended to drive to Florence to meet Donna’s cousin Laurie for breakfast at the Cracker Barrel, but it got called off. Laurie had to go into work to cover for someone and couldn’t make it. It saved us having to get up real early and have to drive a 130 miles, but it didn’t save us from going out to eat. Donna was looking forward to not having to cook, and suggested we go to the Cracker Barrel in Augusta, but neither she nor I wanted to drive the 35 miles just to eat breakfast. I suggested we just go to the IHOP here in Aiken, a mere 3 miles away. Sold.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 99