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Things Fall Apart

April 12th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Recently Read | #
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
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JPEG Timestamp Modifier

April 5th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #

     If you like to take alot of pictures like I do - better yet if you like to hoard a lot of pictures everyone else like I do :P - you’ll find the times don’t always match up between cameras. It kind of kills the point of having an album if the pictures don’t line.

     I tried to come up with a solution with my file modifier, which works, but lacks an interface. I admit that the tool I found here by far trumps mine. :P If I had known it existed, I wouldn’t even have bothered making mine.

     The JPEG Timestamp Modifier basically lets you set all the creation/modified times to the time picture taken (on the EXIF) or you can shift the times up and down by hr/sec increments. You can load multiple files at once as well. I don’t see anything missing from the package. Definitely something to check out.

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Far Beyond the Stars

March 30th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Stuck in My Head | #
Far Beyond the Stars by Denny Schneidemesser
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How to Fly... or Throw Yourself at the Ground and Miss

March 29th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #

How to Fly

  Found this interesting site and article on how to fly.  Sadly, it was the only link available on google (near the top anyways) that was actually related to flying flying - not flying with some giant overpriced piece of metal carrying you.  Definitely sounds like fun - I’ll be trying that soon hehe. :D

  I suppose it’s another thing to add to the list of Things to Do.  At some point, I do hope to get 42 of them. :P

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Heart of Darkness

March 23rd, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Recently Read | #
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
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Left Behind

March 23rd, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
Scene 1:
-- Cut to door outside hallway. --
» Boy opens it and walks in with Friend1 and Friend2 (back to us).
-- Cut to front of group, angled to show only Boy's face. --
» Group walks toward camera down hallway, talking and laughing.  Boy talking and laughing with them.
» Boy drops...[More]
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Embedding Flash to W3C Standards

March 22nd, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #

  Been trying to figure out how to embed Flash the “perfect way” for a while.  The conventional way, using both object and embed tags, is not actually compliant or “legal” so to speak.  If you validate your site (validator.w3.org), you will run into many errors.

   So for a while, everything on my site except the Flash embedding was W3C-compliant.  I honestly don’t know why I care, but it just bugged me that one problem was keeping my site from being fully XHTML.

  Out of all my searches, I have to say this one is most useful: In Search of… the Perfect Plugin Technique.  Not only does it list all the ways to embed Flash and stay within the standards, it lists all the pros and cons of each method.

  From what…[More]

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Complete (Dramatic Remastery)

March 22nd, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Stuck in My Head | #
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Juggling Dreams

March 10th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Essays | #

  Sometimes you feel unstoppable, great, as if the world is only beginning, and you are at the center of it all.  You get ideas, schemes that you never dared consider before, and now that you have, you feel obligated to pursue them, to drive them as far as you possibly can.  At first you're not sure if you're up to the task; the first step looks hard and difficult.  Then you toss in the first challenge, the first dream, and then the second, and then the third.

  Pretty soon, you're not only tossing and catching all three, you are actually juggling.  You can juggle two at a time, worry about the third later.  Or you can juggle all three at once, perhaps without even breaking a sweat.  Over time, you get better; you've gone far beyond anything you ever hoped to do, juggling three when at first you dared not even juggle one.  You're ready for more; you want a challenge.

  And so you throw in the…[More]

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Joy Luck Club

March 9th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Recently Read | #
Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
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Sony VCL-HGE07A Wide-End Conversion Lens

March 7th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #

Sony VCL-HGE07A Lens at Amazon. 
  Been looking for a wide angle lens for my camcorder for the longest time.  The recommended one (VCL-HG0737C) from Sony can cost upwards from $150 to $200.  Recently, I noticed the VCL-HGE07A, a more compact wide-lens available for $230 from the Sony site, but only $80 from Amazon.

  I guess really - you do get what you pay for.  However, I couldn’t figure if Amazon was just mispricing the item or if it’s really worth only $80.  Sony afterall priced it at $230 on their site, well above the $200 of the recommended lens.

  On opening the package, it seems a fine-quality lens.  Very strongly built.  However, there are details that just won’t do - at least for me.  First, there are no lens caps available.  The pouch is nice, but remember it’s a large lens.  Getting it out and avoiding touching the lens is a pain.  Next is using the lens on the camcorder - the quality is nice but you cannot zoom whatsoever.  I did not see this mentioned…[More]

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Falling Asleep

March 6th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Thought of the Day | #
I just want you to know that I try really, really hard. In fact, when I fell asleep one time in class, I disciplined myself by not sleeping again for two nights in a row. I do that quite often.
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From Amoverus

March 5th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Stuck in My Head | #

From Amoverus by Plasmatic

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The Metamorphosis

February 20th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Recently Read | #
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
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Why Not to Concentrate

February 6th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Essays | #
   I was walking home from school one day.  It was a bright and sunny afternoon.  The birds were chirping; the air smelled crisp and clean.  And then I stubbed my toe.  It was a painful stub.  The agony of my tiny toe scrubbing against the abrasive concrete, the concentration of all that pain in such a tiny insignificant stub on my foot, was more than I could bear.  I never wore sandals again.

   Yet that moment sparked a curious interest in me.  It made me realize that concentration, such as the concentration of all that pain in my toe, was not a good thing.  When one is trapped in a cell, concentrated in a small space, he is not happy.  When one is told how and what to think, to concentrate and narrow his mind, he is not happy.  Even in politics, concentration is not a good thing; Americans don’t like concentration of power.  Concentration means communism, dictatorship - all the things we fought to eliminate in past wars.  Just...[More]
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Memories 2

January 31st, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Stuck in My Head | #
Memories 2 by F-777
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Pride and Prejudice

January 28th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Recently Read | #
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
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Doing What Counts

January 18th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
  Pete wiped his forehead and stepped back.  He had just finished helping an elderly woman pack luggage into her car.

  "Thank you so much," the woman said, standing back in amazement.  "You kids are doing so much these days."

  "It's no big deal," Pete chuckled, pulling out a sheet of paper from his pocket.  "Really, I should be thanking you instead."

  "What's...[More]
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Adobe Premiere - Slow Motion Flicker

January 15th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #

  Strangely enough, I only just recently started noticing flicker when I slowed clips down in Adobe Premiere.  This is with interlaced video clips.  Generally you don’t notice them until after exporting to DVD and playing back.

  Did a bit of research online, and from what I gather, it’s due to the fact the interlacing is affected by the change in speed.  To solve this issue, you’ll want to make sure you de-interlace the clip you are slowing down.

  1) Right-click the clip in the timeline.

  2) Select…[More]

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Open Doors

December 29th, 2008 | Posted by pftq in Essays | #
   They say one doesn’t realize what he has until it’s gone.  When I broke my wrist two years ago, I not only realized that I had almost lost my hand completely, I realized how little I’d done, how much more I wanted to do, how close I came to losing the opportunity altogether.  As I spent the following summer bound to my chair with the injury, I taught myself web design and learned to program in six different languages.  The following year, as my friends and I began making videos but could find no outlet for our new hobby, we founded our own club, within months finishing three movies, hosting monthly Theater Days, and starting a VHS-DVD conversion service.  When I later reflected upon the events, after having made twelve websites for schools and organizations, after having had classmates join my club and become paid to teach our video editing to an afterschool class, I realized that opportunities are not sought but created, that it is not the opportunity that is...[More]
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