Category Archives: Culture

Geek culture

"Spaced" DVDs – volume problems

I've been re-watching the DVDs of Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright sitcom Spaced, and noticing that the volume levels go up and down all the time. I didn't remember that being the case from the first time I watched them… which was on a previous DVD player (a Pioneer).

Turns out I'm not the only one to have this problem — those reporting there noted it was an issue on some Toshiba players, but I'm currently using a Sony.

I also have a Panasonic Blu-Ray player I could use, but it's not multi-region, and these discs are Region 2. Damn. And I can't see any easy way of hacking the player to make it multi-region, alas.

That's okay though, because taking a cue from the forum led me to this post about DVD sound problems, and also to a Wikipedia description of Dynamic Range Compression — leading me to think this was causing the issue.

I found this in the DVD player's setup menu. Once I'd switched it from “TV mode” to “standard”, all seemed to be okay again, though in contrast, a newer DVD of Parks & Recreation now seems to have its volume fluctuate, so perhaps I need to switch it back for everything other than Spaced. Odd.

Subtitling now in the Suez

I imagine that Jacqui Mapoon from CSI (Captioning and Subtitling Australia… or International) is someone who helps them out very occasionally, judging by the quality of her work on The Doctor Blake Mysteries: Season 1, Episode 9 “All That Glitters” –  atrocious work.  The gaff that stood out most was the transcription of sewers, but there were so many problems.

Don’t these subtitling services get given the script?  There’s a job listed in the credits as “Post production scripts”, surely they’re able to hand the script over electronically, and it’s just a matter of timing, pagination and confirmation – no transcription, no transcription errors?  I doubt Tim Pye – the writer of the episode – would have got that wrong, nor made the other homophonic errors.

ePub html/xhtml (or chapter) upper file size limit is 300Kb

The size of individual html files — chapters — that make up an ePub should not exceed 300Kb, according to ePubPreFlight, and this thread. Presumably this is to deal with eReader limitations, which are unspecified.

(I’ve found tell that you shouldn’t make the html/xhtml files in your ePub eBook “too big”, but finding out what “too big” is seems to be hard. Now the Internet knows the maximum size, and you don’t have to know all the magic keywords.)

Ultimate geek nostalgia: help fund a doco about the origins of the UK games industry

Yesterday marked 30 years of the Commodore 64.

Meanwhile, a documentary about the origins of the UK games industry in the 70s and 80s, From Bedrooms To Billions is in the works, but needs pledges of support to be made.

If you donate, depending on the amount, you get some pretty cool gear including a digital or DVD copy, posters, your name in the credits, a T-shirt, and even a personalised portrait of yourself from ZZap64 illustrator Oliver Frey. Some of the higher donation amounts actually include vintage computers/consoles and signed (by the authors) copies of classic games for them. Zowee.

They’re aiming to raise the money by 17th of August.

From Bedrooms to Billions

Revisiting Wolfenstein

Wolfenstein 3D is 20 years old. To celebrate it’s been re-released as a browser game.

And as Crikey notes, a 1992 Sydney Morning Herald reviewer was “flabbergasted” with the game: The game, we are warned, is rated PC-13 – Profound Carnage. Good advice. There’s plenty of blood and guts, and the sound effects are blood-curdling, so my sub-13-year-olds won’t be playing.

I remember playing it at my mate Brian’s place back when it was first released — the ancient computer I had at home couldn’t cope with it.

I had a go of it again last night. Sure enough, it worked well in the web browser. After about half-an-hour of shooting Nazis (and Nazi dogs) I felt a bit queasy. I think it was due to focussing on the low-res 3D, rather than the blood and guts.

Greens MP Adam Bandt had a Commodore 64

I rise to speak on the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment (R 18+ Computer Games) Bill 2012. I am sorry that I cannot join in the debate about slide rules and slates, but, like the member for Solomon, I do remember having the Commodore 64. I do remember that, to play a computer game, you had to sit and wait for a tape player to load a game for about half an hour, and hope that it did not get caught some way through it, so that you could play a game of Aztec Challenge or Soccer. The most violent it got then was that a gorilla might throw a barrel at your head while your character was playing, but that was about it. But things have moved on enormously since then. There have been advancements in technology, advancements in innovation and advancements in people’s creativity, and that is a good thing. It is extraordinarily to be welcomed. But it is time for the law to catch up.

— Greens MP Adam Bandt in Parliament, 15/3/2012

Ozemail floppy disk

Amazing the things you find during a clear out. Here, from 1996, is an Ozemail disk.

Ozemail disk from 1996

Australians would remember they used to turn up in magazines and so on, though they were never quite as ubiquitous as the America Online disks that seemed to show up everywhere in the North American magazines.

I haven’t tried to see if this one will still install on Windows 7… in fact for now it’s still sealed in its plastic.

The Ozemail web site www.ozemail.com.au forwards to iiNet, so I guess they got bought out by them somewhere along the line — in 2005 according to Wikipedia.

Google engineer’s rant about Google Plus

A fascinating rant about why Google Plus isn’t working (as well as some interesting stuff about Amazon), from a Google insider.

Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone.

The full rant.

Analysis from Ed Bott:

And there’s the problem with Google+ in a nutshell. It’s a clone of Facebook, built by engineers for people who think like engineers. I now realize what it was I couldn’t put my finger on: this service started out as a list of features. But it didn’t start out with a vision. In fact, I’ve never heard anyone articulate, from a customer’s point of view, why Google+ came into existence in the first place.

I think they’re both probably right… and it’s why I suspect Google Plus won’t get the critical mass to become the replacement for Facebook or Twitter anytime soon.

Please allow approximately 10 working days…

For school work young Owen needed a photo of his family celebrating something, so a suitable photo from a recent birthday party was selected.

I figured I’d upload the photo to BigW photos the night before, to give them a chance to print them out before I arrived the next day.  I noticed the disclaimer “Delivery Times: Please allow approximately 10 working days for your order to arrive in the mail or to be ready to be picked up in store” but figured this was just legalese arse-covering, applicable to weird things like coffee mugs etc.

I fully expected to get an email five minutes after submission.

I wondered to myself how it is that they can make any money from a single 10c photo, paid for via PayPal.  I figure my order must be costing a buck or two in direct and indirect costs; the PayPal fees alone would be the entirety of the payment.

I didn’t get an email.  It’s been four days now, and the order is still “In production” leading me to believe that the order is going to be printed somewhere that isn’t my local BigW, and is then being shipped there.  Needless to say, I shan’t be collecting it; the day after the photo upload I went to Bunnings for a hinge and some storage boxes, and popped into Officeworks beforehand anticipating some delay in printing – alas, there was a sixty second delay, so that prudence wasn’t required.  Of course, I could have gone to Harvey Norman for the photos but it was an extra 100m walk and another 5c, even if their printing seems to be of a higher quality, a classroom of Prep students isn’t going to appreciate the difference.

Riddle me this: if my photos aren’t printed out at my local BigW, why would I upload them to BigW photos when I could drag myself there in person and collect them within the hour?