The blog

I've been using Nero Vision in order to do my next video. A few weeks ago, after getting quite far, the program crashed and corrupted my project so I had to start from scratch. Last night I also got reasonably far, but this morning the saved project keeps claiming that it's empty, so I have to start from scratch. When I do, and I drag something in the timeline, it is not placing it where I let go of the mouse button but somewhere in the future instead. Though the Cyberlink Powerdirector I used for the first video had it's share of problems and limitations, it still wasn't quite as annoying and buggy as this is turning out to be.

I'm currently working on my next video - I've got a lot of the first 15 minutes done, but I need to re-record my video parts, as well as the audio. Though I had roughly 600 sound files and then cut them down, upon re-listening, I flubbed a good deal of the "good" takes. Also, I've managed to get some good sound effects, so will likely re-encode the Dragonball video using those, so that I can then enable ads and maybe get a little bit of recompense towards what I've already spent on these. Finally, I don't want to only review bad films, but I also don't want to manage multiple blip accounts, so though the show is registered on blip as "Aradiel", the episodes themselves will be labelled appropriately (so, the Dragonball one is now no longer "Dragonball Evolution: A Review" but is "Awful Adaptations episode 1: Dragonball Evolution") So, coming soonish is "Awful Adaptations episode 2: Blood the last Vampire", to then...

Just a quick heads up for anyone who reads this and has suffered a problem with this, but CSS pseudo classes need to be expressed in a particular way to guarantee that they work: Normally in css, you will define things with a particular id using #(id) and a class is .(classname) The pseudo class allows you to define particular behaviour, for example, if you want something to change appearence when you hover over it you would use :hover So, to combine them, if you want everything with a particular class to look a particular way when you hover on it, you might want to try .(classname):hover However, this does not always work (in Firefox), as I found out five minutes ago. I was dealing with divs, and the solution was to say div.(classname):hover So, when using pseudo classes, in order to make sure things work, try to be as precise as possible - (tagname).(classname):(pseudoclass) [edit] However, I subsequently discovered that the hover pseudo class is only valid for links ("a" t...

An interesting thought hit me a little while ago. When studying different Philosophers, even ones which are contained within the same label, it is interesting how different they seem to be. Seem being a key word. Take for example Edmund Husserl and Jean-Paul Sartre. Both are Existentialists but both say quite different things. Husserl came first and tried to tackle the concept of how we understand ourselves. When we describe things in the world we tend to describe them as distinct from us, entirely separate. We describe objects as objects and ourselves as subjects. But we can also perceive ourselves as objects. So which are we? Subjects, objects, or some blend of both? And what about other things, what are they, really? In order for us to find out he proposed a mental exercise, a sort of meditation. Don't deny that the world exists, that you exist, that everything else accepts as you perceive, but don't accept it either. Be agnostic. Detach your mind, somehow, reflect and you w...

The Metro Newspaper, which is freely distributed on the transport networks of Britain, has promoted commercial copy-right infringement twice in the past 7 months. Scan 1: Tuesday 22nd December 2009 Scan 2: Tuesday 29th June 2010 I am referring in particular to the anime sites they mention in the above two clippings - sites which stream anime shows an films online. Both sites use advertising and or VIP programs in order to generate revenue. In both clippings they promote the sites using Bleach and Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. The former, last time I checked, is not streamed or licensed to be streamed by the rights holders. The latter is distributed in the UK by Manga Entertainment, which streams 5 episodes at a time from it's own website, and does not license any other sites to stream episodes. So, in the latter case, a national newspaper is promoting a site which partakes in commercial copy-right infringement while there is a free official alternative available for use. I hav...

This is why Internet Explorer sucks and Microsoft is guilty of false advertising. http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_dim_max-height.asp The above is a link to the w3c's website explaining a particular CSS2 element - "max-height" http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/compare/default.aspx This is Microsoft's page comparing the major browsers. Notice how their own product, of course, has more ticks against it than the other browsers. I could go through each one of those explaining why the missing ticks should not be missing, or why the tick should actually be a cross, but instead I will just focus on the claim that it supports CSS2.1 - admittedly it does not say it supports all of CSS2.1, but the w3c site says that IE supports the property. As do other sites I have visited. These sites are wrong. IE does not support max-height. I did a little experiment to prove this. The following pictures are cropped screenshots comparing Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet E...

This morning on the news it was revealed that hospitals that take in the same patient twice in a month, where the second time they come in is a direct concequence of being discharged too early, the hopsital will be "fined" Now, why does this annoy me? Think about what a fine is - it is a cost. You park in the wrong place, you get charged money etc Now, in this case, the word fine is wholey inappropriate. Here is how it was explained to me: When someone enters a hospital for treatment, the NHS pays the hospital a lump sum. The same pateint gets discharged early, comes back in because they haven't fully recovered, and the hospital gets another lump sum. What is being suggested is that in such cases the hospital would not get the second lump sum. Essentially, because the patient hadn't finished being treated adequately, then their return to the hospital is still part of the first treatment. This is not a fine, just an extension of the rules as they stand to prevent abuse...

Last week I got an email from moneysavingexpert, within which one of the offers it mentioned was a £10 voucher for a film and tv streaming site: blinkbox.com So I used it to give it a go, buying Iron Man (£2.99) I could stream it only, but you can also download it - 1.3 gigs. On the downloaded version, when you try to watch it, you need to verify your details over the internet. Now that might seem fair enough on the face of it, but there is something very wrong with this. Think about exactly why you want to download a film. Convenience, right? The ability to watch it whenever you wanted, without the need for hardware. Instead it is data on your hard drive. Except, this way, if you want to stream it, you need a net connection. If you have downloaded it and want to watch it, you neet a net connection. That doesn't seem that convenient to me. In fact, it would be more convenient (in the long term) to buy the DVD and rip it to your hard drive, or to pirate it. Ok, so it's not quite...

Finally, it's done! Sometimes the release of a film breaks your heart. Other times it tears your heart out, grinds it with the heel of it's boot, spits on it and then sets it on fire. Dragonball Evolution, for me, was the latter. "Fun" games to play while watching the video: See how many simple words I mispronounce! See how many times I say "That" and "However"! See how many times I run out of breath midway through a sentence but refuse to stop talking! Pinpoint the exact moment my heart broke in two! Pinpoint the exact moment I lost my sanity (hint: It's after 4) Other versions available here

Google has migrated my site, which now means that though the links on the side aren't broken, you download the files rather than viewing them. I have three choices: 1) Give up 2) Adapt so that those pages can still be hosted on google 3) Be hosted somewhere else I believe I've already expressed how terrible their WYSIWIG editor was. It's now even worse. It's unbearable. I'm therefore going for option 3 asap.