” He was doing an interview, and after the interview this guy come up to him and asks “Why are you so fat?”, and Harold Bishop without fucking missing a beat, turns around and say “Cause every time i fuck your mum, she gives me a biscuit”, That realy is the fifty ton mega zinga of insults “

XD this quote kept me in stitches for about half an hour, which repeated several times during the day, of course it didn’t help i listened to it while sitting in a silent maths class and wanting to burst out laugthing, but oh well : P.

This quote came from LugRadio Season 4 Episode 10.

The Original Picture

The Wire Frame

The Final Product

Above are three versions of the same car, for most people it would appear pretty obvious what car it is : P. This is the second piece of work i have done with Macromedia Flash, the idea of this was to take a real life object and “animate” it. It was sugested to us that we should choose a car, since this would be fairly easy to do, and well it was realy, so obviously a chose a mini, what with me loving the classic mini and that being my forst car : D. For this piece of work it took me about 2 – 3 days, not continuous of course, i did have other lessons in between : P. After this ill be working on several other cars to form the basis for the fore ground of the IMP (interactive multimedia program) I’m working on at the moment.

The Creation

During my time at college I have had to work with Macromedia Flash 8, I’ll admit it’s not the most up-to-date version (i.e. Adobe Flash CS4, to time of publish) but it does what it needs to and its obviously the best the college can afford for the network computers : P. This isn’t my first encounter with flash, but it has certainly been the best work I’ve done on it so far. This was the result of about two days work, and actually I’m quite proud of it. It may have been a simple image to produce on flash but still, for a first time effort it not bad at all, considering the only other times I’ve used it is to just mess around and have a little fun making VERY basic animations. this image

was only done in the class as a practical exercise and will not be used in my final project, but if I do work i intend to do it right.

So as i go through my work ill try and

share some of the images and animation I make, realy i just like showing off, but then people should be proud if they think there work looks good : P.

- Step 1: Ripping the DVD

Obviously if you already have a .avi or .mpg then you can just skip this part.

But if you have all your favorite movies on DVD then you will need to run the following command in a terminal window:

sudo apt-get install acidrip libdvdread3

doing this will install the two packages acidrip and libdvdread3. Acidrip is the face package for ripping the DVD’s, on its own it can only rip unencrypted DVD’s, this is where libdvdread3 comes in, this works with acidrip to decrypt the latest DVD’s with the “anti-copy protection”.

Once you have both of these installed simply load up acidrip, insert the DVD into the computer or laptop, and in the top right-hard corner of the window you will see “Load”. Once pressed all the chapters from the DVD will be displayed in a list, simply select the chapters you want (to make sure you have the right ones you can check them in the “Preview” tab at the top) and select the video codec (I use .avi) and select the audio codec (for .avi use mp3lame (*this may require additional codecs, but if you are already using audio players to play mp3′s then the codecs should be there already)*). Once this is done click “Start” and the ripping will commence, Once done you should now have a .avi of the movie in your user directory.

Helpful Tip: If you are trying to rip a series DVD then you can use the “Queue” button at the bottom next to “Start” by selecting an episode chapter and clicking “Queue” then selecting the next episode chapter and clicking “Queue” and, well you get the picture. Once all chapters are queued just click “Start” and it’ll do all the rest.

- Step 2: Converting the .avi

In this section I will tell you how to re-encode your movie, I will be refering to the movie as being a .avi, but it will work the same if it is a .mpg. At the moment these are the only two I have gotten working but if I find other formats that work I will post them up as well.

As you know the iPod will only accept a .mp4 coded file, so at the moment the .avi is useless to the iPod (however this does mean you now have a back up of the DVD). To get the .avi to a .mp4 I use avidemux. So in a terminal window run:

sudo apt-get install avidemux

Once installed right-click on the .avi file and “open with other application” in the list this shows there will be no avidemu, so you have to use a custom command:

avidemux

This will open up avidemux and if you are using a .avi it will ask you to build a time map, to which you answer yes, if you are using a .mpg it will ask you to do something as well and again just answer yes. Depending on the file size the time it takes may vary. Now that you have the movie loaded up in avidemux you need to change th following:

Video
Audio
Format

You need to change them to look like this:

*Again this part my require you to install some further codecs*

Sorry, but I can’t remember exactly what it was that I installed but if you look around http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avidemux and around google I’m sure that you will find the codec you need. I think it’s ffmpeg but not completely sure. Again sorry about that but if you can get it working then your almost done.

Once the window is set up (See Picture Above) then go to File/Save/Save Video, then pretty standard stuff, type a file name followed by “.mp4″ (otherwise the next step won’t work) and choose a place to save it (I suggest your normal user directory) and then just let it do it’s work.

Since there is a problem with the iPod accepting this encoded mp4 you will have to run it through a re-container to make it a fully working mp4. Now I know what your thinking, what exactly is the difference between the mp4 from avidux and the one that come out of the re-container? Well, to tell you the truth I don’t realy know, but I do know that if you put the mp4 from avidemux straight on to the iPod it won’t work, it will show on the screen but won’t play all you’ll get is a black screen for about 10 seconds and then it will take you back the the movies menu, or it will simply play but with no sound.

So I sugest that wile the video is encoding you go back to the terminal and do:

sudo apt-get install gpac

This is a terminal based program that re-pacages the mp4 and will fix the mp4 produced by avidemux. Once you have the completed mp4 from avidemux pull up a terminal window and type:

MP4Box -add ‘original.mp4′ ‘fixed.mp4′

* when typing in the original you also have to add its directory, and when putting in the name of the new fixed mp4 you need to also give the program a directory to put the fix in, for example:

scully@Laptop:~$ MP4Box -add ‘/home/scully/26.mp4′ ‘/home/scully/ghost26.mp4′
Or in other words just type the “MP4Box -add” then space, then drag the original file into the terminal (if there is a space in the file name it will be put in ‘ ‘ ) follow this wit ha space and then type the name of the new file to be created. (I usually use a simple file name e.g. 001.mp4, as long as you remember which one is which if your doing several in one batch, cause you can always go back and rename it later)

Helpful Tip: If you have just ripped a series DVD that produced several files, why not leave your computer one over night and convert them all at once (at the moment I am doing all this on a Compaq Armada M700, it’s quite old and it only has a pentium 3 processor, but every so often I leave it on over night and convert about 4-6 files in one batch) So put the files into batches and do a batch every night.

- Step 3: Putting the .mp4 on the iPod

To put the .mp4 into the iPod there are several programs with iPod support but the best program I found to put videos on the iPod is gtkpod. to install this go to a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install gtkpod gtkpod-aac

Then once it’s finished load up gtkpod with your iPod plugged in and mounted and at the top of the window you will see “load ipod(s)”, click on it and it should load your iPod, once it is load you should see it in the library list down the side, in the picture bellow this is shown as the library “rei. There should be no additional configuration inside gtkpod to find your iPod, but I’m not sure, I didn’t get any problems but I can’t guarantee it on other systems.

(In the picture above my iPod is not connected)

Then like most programs like this just go to “files – add files” this will put them in the gtkpod library and then just drag them from there into the iPod. Then just wait till it’s copied your files click on save at the top and then you can dismount and unplug your iPod, and the videos should be on you iPod and they should work perfectly.

I hope you Enjoy using this how to and I hope that if you use this method it will work for you.

“I Wii standing up”

After coming up with this I then went on to create a simple image that I would later re-work to make it look great on the front of a T-shirt.

I know it’s not much at the moment but I’m still working on the finished version. After showing a few of my friends this (one of them being cbx33) and we just started coming up these alternate versions of this. Some of them are pretty random and you do have to have a good sense of humour, and before we even knew it we had come up with about 50 versions, this was later expanded further to 75+ thanks to cbx33. Of course now that we have 75+ our goal is to get up to 100, and the best one’s I will put on T-shirts.

(Key) ‘/’ = change from front to back of shirt

1. I wii round my girlfriend house

2. I wii with my friends

3. I wii whilst my friends watch

4. I wii at the office

5. I wii in my living-room

6. I wii in the bedroom

7. I wii sitting down

8. It’s good to wii

9. wii’ing is a good form of exercise

10. I’ve wii’ed in every room of the house

11. too wii, or not to wii

12. Wii’ing can take hours

13. last time I wii’ed I was there all day

14. I wii with my girlfriend

15. I’m #1 at wii’ing

16. I hold the top score on my wii

17. I learnt to wii at an early age

18. I’v never had a problem wii’ing

19. I sprained my wrist whilst wii’ing

20. me wii broke the TV

21. I imported my wii from Japan

22. Man I love my wii

23. I “heart” my wii

24. I wii in surround-sound

25. I wii with my 42inch / plasma TV

26. I wii with people around the world

27. wii with the world

28. wii, and the world wii’s with you

29. want to come back to my place and wii

30. have the chance to wii

31. my wii’s got external memory

32. I play games with my wii

33. I accessorise my wii

34. my wii is backward compatible

35. I can’t control my wii any more / because I lost the controller

36. wii’ing is hard in small spaces

37. my wii comes with a three year guarantee

38. I can wii from across the room

39. Sometime I stroke my wii

40. I can play with my wii for hours

41. wii’ing is the best part of my day

42. I don’t let anyone touch my wii

43. my wii frightens small animals

44. sometime my wii overheats

45. I hacked my wii

46. no one understands my obsession with my wii

47. wii’ing too long makes my eyes hurt

48. the greatest moment of my life was when I saw my wii

49. My mom keeps telling me my wii is too loud

50. people complain of headaches after using my wii

51. I sold my wii on eBay

52. I like to hide my wii from my brother

53. I built a cabinet for my wii

54. My wii is the centrepiece of my room

55. My friend sold me his wii

56. I exchanged my wii for a PSP

57. My wii fell off the back of a lorry

58. I wii’d on national TV

59. Shhh….I have my wii in my bag

60. The doctor said playing with my wii gave me RSI

61. I like to polish my wii

62. Thieves stole my wii

63. I play with my wii in bed

64. My wii is a special edition

65. Sometimes my friends and I have a wii party

66. I put my wii on the Internet

67. My wii requires regular maintenance

68. My wii is toasty in the winter

69. I develop wii games

70. I make up games for my wii

71. My wii plays dvds

72. My wii doesn’t play well with some hardware

73. My wii plays music

74. My girlfriend says my wii is boring

75. One day my wii could be famous

76. I play golf with my wii

77. I surf the Internet with my wii

78. I sword fight with my wii

79. Nintendo member of staff, I played your wii before you did

80. My wii is a thing of beauty