seanwillson.com

i imported all of our wedding videos over thanksgiving. there were 3 dv tapes with about 2.5 hours of dv video. after it was imported into my computer it takes up about 31 gb of disk space. needless to say i was pretty surprised at how much space was taken up. luckily i have my new 200 gb external lacie drive to keep backups and i can swap some of the video on and off my machine when i am editing it.


i have a copy of final cut express that i purchased with my machine that i’ll be using to improve the lackluster job that our videographer did on our wedding dvd. the content itself was great, i just didn’t like the resulting dvd that he produced. after seeing the quality of the output you can get from applications like imovie, idvd, and final cut express i figured i would do it myself. one of the cool features of the final cut express products is that they are non destructive editors. much like itunes lets you create playlists, final cut lets you create edits without actually changing the original media. this allows you to play with edits, effects, and scenes without destroying any of the original raw footage. another cool thing is that final cut allows portions of your media to be “offline” while editing. for example, i have the 2.5 hours of footage broke up into 6 raw footage files. i can have 5 of those files on my external disk and 1 on the local machine i’m using to perform the edits. final cut will behave perfectly normally and will let you edit using the files you have “online” at the time. pretty cool ahe?


i’m sure i’ll have some interesting posts in the future with my lessons learned as well other useful tidbits, stay tuned for details.

i received my powerbook back from apple the beginning of this past week. i wanted to wait a few days before i wrote about the results. the first few days i had the machine it seemed like it froze up a bit more than it should have. it wasn’t coming out of sleep properly and it had to be rebooted a few times. i wasn’t really sure what was going on. after reading an article over at mac dev center about macintosh maintenance under panther i decided to follow a few of their tips. i’m not sure if they really had any effect but i can say my machine hasn’t froze up once since following their directions. it’s also now returning from sleep mode without having to sacrifice my first born.


as you’ll likely remember i had my machine sent in for a new display. the above problems had nothing to do with the new display, this i know, but regardless it was the state of my machine when i got it back from apple. i can honestly say that the display is perfect. i have zero complaints about it, nada one … well maybe one complaint, it took 9 days for me to get it back, but that’s being nit picky honestly. the display is bright, vibrant, has zero dead pixels, and more importantly it has zero white blotches. i was a bit concerned since some folks on the apple support forums had received their machines back only to have more white blotches. i waited until those posts had subsided on the forum and then sent my machine after reading come success postings.


after receiving my machine back with a perfect display i can honestly recommend that the rest of the 15” powerbook owners with blotch problems send theirs in for repair immediately.

after playing a bit with my own openssl solution i found some faults with my original posting. the obvious huge one had already been pointed out by a reader. i forgot about the web of trust that is broken by creating our own certificate. who’s to trust us? well apparently not apple. once you restart mail.app after having approved a cert from another user it forgets that you trust them. the next time you get a message from them you have to perform the signature hand shake again. the web of trust must be created somewhere, this is what the thawte certificate does for you. i have since download the free thawte certificate and will post later how well it worked for me.

i was surfing without my powerbook tonight, yes i still haven’t gotten it back from apple. anyhow, i came across a posting on the apple forums detailing how to properly calibrate your battery. i’ve run into problems similar to what was posted in this thread. for example a few times my laptop battery would get to 30% life and then the machine would instantly go to sleep. i also found myself losing battery life fairly quickly. this writeup makes perfect sense and judging by the number of responses it appears that others are seeing success following this new method. i’ll indeed give it a try when i get my machine back, any day now me thinks.

is anyone as discontent or disappointed with the software industry as i am these past few years? it’s as if software companies have given up on innovating and improving their products and have instead turned toward throwing huge sums of money at lawyers to sue their competitors into oblivion. the most visual instance of this as of late has been the sco wave of lawsuits against all unix vendors, novell, ibm, and others. i guess their next target is going to be the bsd vendors like apple and other open source distributions. if that isn’t the ideal example, how about at&t suing paypal and ebay for infringement of their “mediation of transactions” patent. their what? what the heck is an “apparatus for employing a communications system with actively connects communicating entities to mediate transactions”? if you submit a patent, the unwritten rule is to make it as obtuse and obfuscated as possible. this leaves you with a huge window that will facilitate the suing of anyone and everyone who remotely appears to infringe on your patent. we have truly entered the era of innovation via litigation.

i’m now powerbook less. yep, you read that right … i’m not in possession of my powerbook any longer. don’t think it’s gone forever, no sir. i had to send it in for repairs last friday. there was a manufacturing flaw that is causing white spots to appears on the lcd displays of most, if not all new 15” powerbook owners. it usually starts out as a small white blotch but then you get a few more and the screen just starts looking horrible. anyhow, i called applecare and they send me a box that i returned the machine in. i hope to get the machine back some time this week. i have a ton of things i want to do on it and i’m really feeling the windows pain now. i’ll let ya know when i get it back and if the problem is fixed. from what others said they either give you a new machine or swap out the whole display assembly.

i was hanging out with some friends last night and all of the sudden i realized how stupid i was. ok, maybe not stupid, but the depth of my understanding and comprehension disappointed me. we were talking about topics ranging from linguistics, astronomy, cosmology, history, to the mafia and politics. some of it was pretty heady, but it was a very good time. during the conversations i found myself often wondering what the heck rock i’ve been living under? where were all of the things i learned in school? had they fallen out of my head? i was rather … scared.


i’ve always considered myself to be someone who was intelligent but certainly not a genius. i know a lot about a range of topics but i realize that there are a huge number of things that i know absolutely nothing about. well, it wasn’t until last night that i realized how little i remember about the things i once learned. i’ve spent so much time in my life learning about computers and software that i’ve neglected everything else. not everything i guess, not entirely, but i certainly don’t remember some of the basic things i once learned. i’m talking about the fundamentals things that form the foundation of our existence.


i think an example is in order. how many people remember how atoms and particles interact? how about electricity, how does it really work? how about magnetism? these are things we use every day of our lives yet we take them for granted? these are things that a lot of us have learned about but we may have forgotten most of the details. why? i guess interest in the topic could be an answer. but doesn’t is bother you that your ignoring the very things that make the universe you live in function? it bothers me more than i’d like to admit. ok, maybe priority is an answer … obviously the health of a family member or your daily job is more important than understanding gravity. i do however think that it’s important to not take for granted the things that dominate and run the world around us.


maybe science isn’t your forte, what about politics? do you really understand how our system of government works? are you involved in the process? what i mean by this is, do you contact your senator or congressman to let them know your position on an issue? how about the middle east, do you really know the history of that region of the world? i know i don’t … yet we as a people are forcing our system of governing upon that region. don’t you think it’s important to understand why the rest of the world hates the united states? again, topics i know some things about but my ignorance is frightening.


i’ve always thought of myself as someone who wants to know the why’s, yet as of late i feel like i’ve been neglecting them. not any longer … i need to take advantage of the technology i have to manage my time better. i need to take the time to relearn the things i’ve forgotten. i want to be someone who understands the issues that influence my generation. i want to be someone who participates in life instead of sitting back and letting life take me for a ride. lately i don’t think i’ve been that person. well, not any longer … from this point forward i will change, i will learn, i will work toward understanding and making a difference …