Ongoing under this tag: Five Days of Google Play

25 Cent Apps at Google Play

Cross-reference google play and amazon by availability with links beneath the cut. AMAZON IS NOT YET SHOWING ALL SALE PRICES ON THESE GAMES. Each is marked on availability. Check back later for updates.

ETA: Updated at 10:47 PM with two additions/corrections.

( twenty five cent apps, day four )

25 Cent Apps Still at Amazon

They seem to still have some of day one and day two and three apps, so below cut are the twenty-five cent apps at Amazon excluding today's.

( Amazon 25 cents still available )

This is a little late, so I think the list is accurate until this afternoon. Cross-reference google play and amazon by availability with links.

25 Cent Apps at Google Play

( list twenty five cent apps at GP and Amazon )

( also on sale at google play )

For Android users:

Top Apps for $0.25, changed daily for the next five days. Including Office Suite Pro 6 which I cannot recommend highly enough for reading and editing MS Office docs and hooks into both dropbox and googledocs seamlessly, among others. Twenty five cents.

Apps You Want

Earlier recommendations on android apps

For those who like app sales of any kind and want to track them:
AppSales, free.

If you like to script or code and need an easy program:
DroidEdit, free. I ended up buying the paid version, it's that useful. Also has dropbox support.

TubeMate, free. Youtube donwloader. Ad-supported, but it's very fast.

Amazon Discount Helper, free. When using, the area that says how much of a discount you want, use whole numbers. You put 21-93 percent? Doesn't work. 20-90 does. The typing in the amount in the box? Sometimes doesn't work. Use the slider. However, it does seem accurate AFAIK.

Drippler, free. News and offers apps about your particular phone. Link is to a short list of some of the ones available for which phone.

Kindle-only

SimCity Deluxe - just as awesome as SimCity. Love.

Probably this is old news or there are workarounds for this somewhere already, but if you own a Kindle Fire or an Android Tablet and like to download fic directly onto your Kindle/Android device from the website, this might help.

Currently, mobi files from AO3 download into the Download folder and from there you have to move them to the correct folder manually. Or you can try this. If done successfully, your downloaded mobi files from AO3 will immediately go into the correct folder for insta!reading.

Tested with the following devices successfully:

Tablet/E-Reader: Kindle Fire
System Version: 6.3.1_user_4107720

Tablet: Asus Transformer
Model: TF101
Android: 4.0.3

Phone: Samsung Galaxy S III
Model: SGH-T999
Android: 4.0.4

( this isn't hard, just steps )

( instructions for Android Tablets and Phones )

( instructions for Kindle Fire )

I probably need to check this for numbers. Also, the paucity of screenshots for Kindle is because the Galaxy S III has screenshot capability by swiping the screen, which Kindle does not. Which okay, Galaxy, how are you so awesome?

1.) WE HAVE AIR CONDITIONING! And I have been depressingly penniless for two weeks, but all is forgiven when one sleeps in a room at a temperature somewhat below that of boiling water and the surface of Venus.

2.) To compensate, we are on Day 4 of The Internal Server Error Festival at work. So far, this is what we have learned:

a.) no one knows why they are happening, or more terrifying, why they aren't when logic--oh rapture--dictates they should have.
b.) they don't always display as a giant white Internal Sever Error page.

Here's where things became weird.

After entering info in a text box, the page autopopulates three other text boxes below it at the top of the page. Mysteriously, when loading stopped, nothing was autopopulated, but to the right of my text boxes, in the smooth, completely featureless white space, was a line of what looked like the first fifty characters of an doctype declaration for html, followed by the html tag and head tag on line two, and enclosed in title tags, the words 500 Internal Server Error.

If I selected the first line and scrolled down, an entire html markup was hidden in there up to closing html tags.

Pulling the source, I was surprised to see that the page was peppered with tiny boxes, if you will, of hidden fields stuffed with hidden views and mysterious javascript. I mean, it's not mysterious in that I don't know what it and the views do. Just for the life of me, I can't figure out why all the text box validations and drop downs need to be assigned to views and then hidden in the goddamn page. On the other hand, as indicators of what went wrong go, it usefully told the programmers (and me) exactly where the errors were coming from, so.

3.) I did not know one could be coding blocked. It's like writers block, but even worse, because for me, it comes with an obsessive need to keep making it worse. I finally pulled apart my Mediatomb sorting code and got alphabetization to work, albeit not the most graceful looking code (it is so ugly and so repetitious it makes me want to cry), but it works and autosorts all my TV show folders and movies into alphabetical containers because dude, I have about 2T of movies, videos, and TV shows and scrolling through those on my bluray player's very pretty interface was freaking slow.

Okay, you probably dont know this about me, but I'm really anal about organization. This is where it all went wrong.

( javascript is usually friendlier than this )

All of that is to bring me to my question. Does anyone know if custom metadata can be imbedded in a video file that's also readable? I want to go through and imbed fandom as a metadata tag in all the vids I have (which is going to take possibly the rest of my life) and show metadata in all the show files. That would, quite literally, change my life at this point in time. I compiled Mediatomb with three separate programs that can read metadata, so any help here would be deeply appreciated before I begin to cry helplessly over my javascript, which would not be fun for anyone.

Oh God, air conditioning, never leave me again. For the record, it's magic.

Touchpad on laptop question:

Okay, using the latest Synaptics drivers (and the one previous), at increasingly short intervals, my touchpad would jerk up to the upper right of the screen and would keep going there no matter what I tried to do in the screen. Restart fixes it, but I was getting it once a day or less at teh end.

So I downgraded to the 2010 driver that came with my laptop and the scroll is, I kid you not, so hard to do it hurts. I've fixed the settings in various ways, but the scroll is just slow and non-sensitive even racking it up to the highest sensitivity. My entire touchpad is slower, which is why I switched drivers in teh first place years ago, and I don't know why now the direct Synaptic drivers started doing this so constantly.

Does anyone else have this problem or found a way to fix it? Google was not terribly helpful.

Some part of me had to have known that anything as simple as reinstalling iTunes had to result in the deletion of two thirds of my music. I mean, that was just freaking fate.

Currently endeavoring to restore said files after successfully reinstalling iTunes after weeks of weird random shut-downs and loss of audio quality and noting--so very stupidly--how much better it was working. Verbally. To myself, granted, but dude, that was totally tempting fate. Everything's backed up to Amazon--who knew getting a tablet would result in a vested interest in cloud access--but seriously, I have no desire to test that. I just really want my library and playlists back now. Suddenly, those random shut-downs just don't seem so bad.

This has been a message from my laptop at--fuck my life--almost five thirty.

Avengers midnight showing with Child tonight! School is every day, but midnight showings are forever = geek parenting 101.

In honor of Avengers: 6 Ways Iron Man Is Objectively Better Than Batman complete with fairly traumating pic of poor, poor Captain America. Dear God, why.

6 Classic Kids Shows Secretly Set in Nightmarish Universes

I have never felt less hopeful for the future. I mean, even Scooby. Even Scooby.

For anyone interested in upgrading to an SSD, Newegg has OCZ Agility, 120 GB on sale for $114 ($99 after MIR). I'm only using a little more than half of mine for my OS and all my programs and program settings, so if you use two hard drives, this is a primary will totally change your life.

For reference, this is the model I ordered for svmadelyn and for my server to take over as primary hard drive. Server is also getting a major RAM upgrade finally before I upgrade the OS sometime this month due to weird speed problems I've been having.

I feel very good about the world atm.

Mobo Player

So there is finally an Android app I can run that plays avi and wmv! (Yes, wmv, so not kidding.)

Moboplayer - For Android Devices - For Kindle Fire. Tested with .avi and .wmv files.

For Kindle, this may be complicated, so please follow these instructions precisely.

On your Kindle Fire Settings
1.) Go to Settings.
2.) Go to Device.
3.) Allow Installation of Applications - change to yes

In your Kindle Browser
1.) Go to the link above on your Kindle Fire browser.
2.) Click on this file: MoboPlayer 1.2.179.apk.
3.) Download it from rapidshare.
4.) Agree to install it.

Add Video to Kindle
This assumes you do not use ES File Manager; if you do, then just transfer directly.
1.) Hook up your kindle fire to your computer and transfer one avi and one wmv. I used two older SPN vids, but damned if I know where they came from.
2.) For testing purposes, grab one wmv and one avi file and add to your Kindle Video folder.
3.) Disconnect Kindle from computer.

Moboplayer
1.) Go to Apps->Moboplayer
2.) Open it.
3.) It's going to ask to scan. Let it do that.
4.) It should show a list of videos. DO NOT CLICK ON ANYTHING.
5.) A menu shows at the bottom. Click on the icon that is three dots (...).
6.) Choose settings.
7.) Scroll to Playback.
8.) Checkmark 'Default Using Soft-Decoding.'
9.) Click back.
10.) Now choose an avi or wmv and play.

I've uploaded a zip file with the vids I tested with for baseline. Download it onto your computer and add to your Kindle.

Link to Test Vids: Test Folder

The following extensions work:
1.) .avi
2.) .rmvb
3.) .wmv
4.) .flv
5.) .mpg
6.) .mp4
7.) .mkv
8.) .divx
9.) .rm
10.) .mpeg
11.) .mp4v

The following do not (yet):
1.) .ram
2.) .mov

It's supposed to be DLNA able, but aVia is also DLNA able and will share with all yoru Android devices. More on that when I've tested it.

FanfictionDownloader

If you are using the Calibre extension and it seems to be giving you the title Hide this banner for eveyrhting at AO3, yeah I know, it's the X-Path pickup of the first match. If no one has a temp fix for it (TELL ME!) I'll be trying to work on one tonight. Python is not my language, but I did manage to get it to recognize Relationship custom column in Calibre and populate it, so I feel brave.

ETA: Extension .mp4v also works.

I have to admit, the recent spamming of DW has been weirdly mesmerizing, with at least two times receiving what could have been a semi-relevant comment if the subject line wasn't random letters both lowercase and capital.

Truth--it's been a very long time since I received interesting spam, and yes, in a perfect world, we would be spam free, but work with me here, if there's some mystical burden of required spam that is our sacrifice to the tech gods, would it kill them to make it interesting or at least, not hideously boring that even the subject line breaks my heart? Once upon a time, I had both British housewife heiresses and Nigerian princes offering me money if I sent them money first for Obscure Banking Reasons We Know Not.

This is annoying, yes, but there's a kind of wistfulness to it, and is it just me, or are these comments from other people's LJs? I'm actually most weirded out that some felt rather like an AI was responding to my entry after a terrible mistranslation or something.

Tablet

Name: Castiel
Brand: Asus Transformer
Model: TF101-B1
HD: 32 GB SSD
RAM: 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM
Mini HDMI, microphone, camera, micro sd (>= 32 GB size)

( short review )

Friday I had the combination annoying and gratifying experience of helping a coworker out and then utterly killing my faint thoughts toward looking into an iPad or work (currently my Kindle is doing double duty to hold the design documents when I script tests; even having two monitors no longer cuts it when I have to be able to script on one screen, use the second screen to hold my original plan for a script, and need a third to look the original requirements. Dude, we need like, four screens at this point; there are so many changes in workflow that I have to actually create entire cases from scratch so I can see how the hell this is supposed to work.

Note: if you live in Texas and may be applying for benefits or know someone who is, I will be posting a tutorial on how to use this way of submitting your application. As a tester, it's driving me nuts, but for clients, I think this will eventually turn out to be a hugely good thing. What I don't know is how to do that without the upping the risk of someone eventually noticing via google that seperis sounds like Certain Employee With Opinions. I'll get back to that after this release, along with some further updates on welfare policy and what you need to know. Keep in mind when I do post, the information is Texas specific, but policy is federally mandated, so there is crossover in different states.

Anyway, one of my coworkers has an iPad and a Toshiba both, and wanted to transfer her music to the Toshiba and was getting absolutely nowhere. She brought them to work for me to do after some coaxing, because like most people who have to deal with competing OS's, in her heart she thought the entire thing was because she was just, you know, tech challenged in a bad way. This is a program tester by the way; I always want to coax my coworkers into a seminar titled "It Really Isn't You; It Is That Fucked Up" with a side of "No, Really, This Is Because They Designed It to Make It Harder for You to Do This So You Will Buy Their Products and All Companies Do This". I am still working on this seminar.

Teh only Apple product I use is iTunes, for various lazy-related reasons, so I'd almost forgotten that iTunes purpose when combined with objects (iPod, iPad, iPhone) is to drive me nuts. I explained about computer authorization and DRM and did a search to see what she had that was locked (nothing, thank God) and the waited patiently while iTunes took an hour to complete a synch operation that takes me ten minutes with a direct sd card move, and while doing that, I stared at the gorgeous iPad and realized that there was no possible way that it wouldn't send me into conniptions trying to use it with my spreadsheets and docs that I need to update now; when I want to move a song, I want to just move it.

I'm not any happier with my experience with the Toshiba tablet; my Kindle and my phone both use android and I broke them to my will as far as getting root access and setting my organization up even if the limits can be--frustrating, but working with someone else's tech means I can't spend ten minutes getting the apps I want to make life simple, and it was a revelation all over again that dealing with my server's ubuntu in various forms comes in stupidly handy at the weirdest times, and how much I depend, literally, on workarounds I don't even think about anymore. Moving music of all things--legally goddamn bought in the iTunes store music free of DRM--should not have been this kind of production that took a computer authorization, a full synch that took forever, and then finally the sd card transfer.

I really want a tablet now after using my Kindle to hold my work docs and finding it a lifesaver to be able to flip through the pages and search and even edit directly there and carry it around with me to meetings--it's hitting me how stupidly useful this would be for reading design documents and screenshots and being able to make notes directly during meetings instead of having to jot things down and hope to God I can read my own handwriting later--but the iPad and the Toshiba both did not encourage me to think this will be a painless process on par with using my home laptop regularly. The only one that seems like it might meet my requirements is the Motorola Galaxy, but now I'm suspicious that the ability to do more complex work--and what I want to eventually do is use it so when our design documents update, I can add te revisions in without losing my notes--also means it will be more stupidly complex work to make them do something that should be very simple.

I am feeling technologically cynical, I think.

I think I have entered the resignation stage of grieving for Stargate Atlantis. I was able to watch Sheldon Cooper without seething hatred, and I didn't want to set Leonard on fire even once. Yes, I can watch The Big Bang Theory without (much) anguished pain at the scope of my loss.

...so it took me some time to--I don't want to say 'move on' so much as 'expand my love of socially awkward, painfully neurotic physicists'. I feel this is a step on the path to healing, even if still seeing the words "Stargate Universe" makes me wish to expel the words from my active vocabulary forever.

In other news, between environmental collapses and defect arguments (work is being very worky), I have been re-reading Stargate Atlantis and Child and I are watching season two like it's the second coming of Star Wars and Harry Potter combined. I think at any time you are sincerely watching Michael and muttering about the brilliant acting and biting social commentary, you are creating a new stage of grieving that could be titled "Batshit Country".

We won't even talk about Trinity and Conversion except to say I suddenly realize that was Oscar calibre acting and by God, Hollywood has no taste. Even though I don't think Oscars go to television, that's just shortsighted because John's chin trembled and blowing up a solar system is so deep.

Yeah. I miss my show so much.

In other news I upgraded my laptop hard drive to solid state and I'm pretty sure physics is being redefined by the response time. Seriously. I have no idea how I managed to survive with a plain 7200 RPM when this was waiting for me. Just. Speed. Everywhere. Granted, I had to take out the DVD drive and buy a specialized bay chassis to house my old hard drive where the DVD drive was, but--my Windows Experience hard drive score is seven point eight out of seven point nine. I only ran it a few hundred times to be sure.

It's beautiful. I thought of Rodney the whole time. He would soooo approve.

For a while now, the entire package system of Ubuntu has mystified me in that way where I can't figure out why everyone doesn't do it this way and why are we using huge exe programs like a sucker when--I just felt several programmers start hating me and I'll stop. Suffice to say, I couldn't quite parse why this wasn't standard.

I got it during my last ubuntu upgrade to 11.10 and Mediatomb broke dramatically. Because all teh dependent libraries and operating system updated, but Mediatomb was working off a build back from 2010, about three number combinations ago.

( this is boring to everyone but me )

( I do go on a lot about the wonder of media servers, yes, i know )

There has got to come a time I will have conversation outside of my server drama. I mean, eventually?

So okay, I have said I never call V's husband about computer problems because calling a computer science PhD for anything I need is like calling Batman to help you step over a puddle. A very small puddle. That doesn't exist. It's overkill, is what I'm saying, and embarrassing.

( boring things on media servers )

It does worry me, on occasion, that "DLNA" is not only now in my active vocabulary, but it's possible the reason that the compiling thing worked this time was I actually did understand the instructions and performed them correctly.

Right. That's--kind of scary, actually.

...oh. This is why people want internet TV. And--apparently--smart blurays.

(Yeah. IDK. Smart, yes.)

After getting back a couple of refunds, I logically picked out a very reasonably priced, reasonably sized television for what was going to be a glorified computer monitor that would also occasionally play movies. Due to treacherous sales (I had no idea this was happening or I would have bought online), I walked out with a 42 inch Panasonic Viera and three bluray players (one for my mom's birthday, one for my sister, so just--whatever, that was fun) that a salesman assured me were all network ready.

By God and little saints, they really are. My bluray has apps. The bluray has builtin wireless (my God) and they all have LAN ports, access to a terrifying number of places to buy movies (I recognized Netflix and Amazon) and apparently will all play from my server or any computer in the network.

My TV also has the potential to control a wireless camera--this is a feature--which I don't have but suddenly--horrifically--feel there is a lack of in my life.

I'd probably feel much worse about this if I hadn't gotten my mom and sister something, too. I'm still kind of in the blank dazed thing. Then again, after the last four months of my life, I'm pretty sure retail therapy was in order like whoa.

Birthday shopping for my mother is always faintly stressful, as she is of that class of people that say "anything!" and honest to God, means it. Which does mean everything; she will love socks as she loves kindles as she loves badly glued panoramas. It's annoying.

I've been wanting to get her an ereader or a tablet thing for a while, but the expense froze me; not on my side, on hers. It's one thing, in her head, to pay largish amounts of money for birthday computers or birthday vacuums (don't ask) for her (or birthday origami paper, which possibly was the best gift I ever got her; it almost hurts that all of it was on sale because amazon at the time had no idea that they had the only gold-backed origami paper in the known universe. *sighs*). But even the small birthday camcorder a few years ago made her uneasy. Computers and vacuums (and apparently, origami paper) justify their expense. Small camcorders, even very inexpensive ones that are hardy, are looked upon with suspicion for their apparent fragility and their potential for breakage. This is why her cell phone is like, five thousand years old. It's not that she wont' love it; it's that she will never use it for fear of breakage.

Then I found this:

A tablet thing

It has many, many, many key features to argue in its favor. The most important of which is for the next month to disapprovingly talk about the horrific expense of tablets and casually have amazon open to the current iPad price. Then, subtly, show her a Motorola galaxy and shake my head. Finally, the coup de grace, talk about how I could not survive without my Kindle and loudly talk about how I take my library everywhere. As she knows the cost of the Kindle (as she bought teh first one for me), why, this will look like a bargain!

It'll come early enough that I'll have time to learn to use it myself and load it with things she likes before I hand it over. There's a workaround to getting a kindle app on there, thank God, so we are not at the mercy of Barnes and Noble.

The only thing that annoys me is that this one has gone down four dollars since I bought it. You may wonder about why I don't cancel it and buy again. I tried that. Within ten minutes it went back up and I knew I was beat.

I'll report on it after I have a chance to play with it, but I do like the reviews, especially those who have iPads who give an honest assessment of its strengths and weaknesses, since the main functionality for her is probably going to be as an ereader and some light surfing and playing games. She's not going to want to watch movies on it or television; she hates small screens for that, so from what I can tell, it's ideal for the stuff she does like to do. I'm hoping the app store for this has some crossword puzzles and logic games since she's an addict for those. It's Android, but apparently some of the android games on the regular android store do not work well, but other reviews said they worked just fine, so--*hands*. And if it utterly sucks, I have time to return it and find something better. I'm kind of devoted now to the tablet idea now.

In celebration of three days--three entire days--of worklessness, I finally sat down with Watson the server and started my epic journey into actually using it for something other than about 3TB of extra storage and writing piles and piles of thirty page bash scripts and enjoying command line. After getting virtualbox functional, I was skimming through the mythbuntu recs and then hit a wall; I am very tired of creating bash scripts to reinvent how to move goddamn files without losing them (it happens) or renaming them all to fred (almost happened). And it is not a sign of weakness to use a goddamn gui anymore than we drive instead of walking over great distances.

Also, virtualbox let me play with ubuntu, kubuntu, and xubuntu desktops and dear God it was nice to move things with a click.

(seriously, my bash script for mass-moving is thirty pages long)

New-to-me-to-use software recs

Virtualbox - it has both a gui and a local web interface, both of which I recommend highly. There's a version for every OS. It's stupidly easy to create the basics, and the steep learning curve is when you get fancy. You install as bootable directly through the virtualbox interface and then open it up and use it like any OS. I haven't tried it on a windows machine yet, but from what I can tell, there's no difference. If you've wanted to check out other OSs but are enslaved to Windows, seriously, this is fantastic. Trust me when I say I did my best to make a mess of it, and it still didn't destroy the universe.

The web gui is phpVirtualBox; the only flaw is that while it walks you through creating the VM, the first-run wizard that loads and installs the OS isn't there, or at least, I can't find it. Easily fixed; before double clicking to start teh machine, go to settings, storage and mount the ISO file to the virtual dvd/cd like you would if you were installing any OS. The only other problem is I can't make the mouse function lock, so I have two mouse arrows and it's weird.

This really is the most ridiculously easy program to use. And here I was trying to use vmware like a sucker.

Mediatomb - I'm still on the fence on this one. I like it, but the gui is not as flexible without custom scripting as I'd hoped, since when it's done this is going to be for my family to use. But it's javascript based scripting, so it's not hard, either. VLC's current release also doesn't have a UPnP interface, which pisses me off, but the nightly builds do, so I'm staring blankly at the idea of building from windows with the binaries. Doing it in linux from command line is ridiculously easy and spoiled me a lot; windows builds on a windows machine are complicated. I'm beginning to get why programmers don't like Windows. Also, why I'm configuring Totem to play from there; what I don't know is how to do the transcoding for blurays; makemkv has a streamer that can do the decode, but writing up the procedure looks suspiciously like work.

Mediatomb also has the ability to find and play youtube, apple trailers, and a lot of flexibility on adding other web-based media if you write the transcoding.

Calibre - this isn't new to anyone, but I just started using the server aspect and that part is damn awesome. After staring the server, the web interface loads and it has nice organization. When you're away from home but you totes forgot to add the Wheel of Time series to your ereader, it used to be you'd have to cry into your ereader and curse the vagaries of technology, but now, you just login (if your computer happens to be on at home; wait, you left your computer at home?) and download it. I know all of us have had that moment.

Things That Are Annoying Me

I did say this is my Weekend of Slothful Indulgence, right? Right.

1.) I cannot find a decent apache gui. I get it's complicated. I even get that a web based gui can't (I do not believe this, but whatever) cover all complicated functionality. I do not get the idea that because command line and config files were good enough for the cavemen chipping out the code on stone punch cards we should all look askance at a goddamn working gui to take care of the basic functionality and make it easy to monitor. Coding is fun; drudgery-coding is not. I have written many stupid bash scripts in my time, but none have come close to the ones that I had to write to tell me periodically that my apache was still running correctly. Using Webmin is nice and all, but I want a dedicated goddamn gui.

2.) VLC does not have UPnP right now. Just. Why? Why why why.

By the way, has anyone used mythbuntu yet? I'm loading a copy into virtualbox to play with, but I was wondering what exactly I'm looking at. Is it just recording TV or is there more to it?

Related to my rage topic, but on a happier note:

MakeMKV is currently my bluray back-up of choice. It rips into .mkv, but I haven't found a player that won't play it, it allows selective ripping, and if you are like me, you will get really excited when you can see you have like, eight audio tracks and closed captioning in several languages and formats. I've worked with both the Windows and Linux version, but Linux was what I primarily used.

Notes:

It can be a resource hog. My laptop is an i7 quad and overheats like a lifestyle choice and it took everything while running, though it usually took between fifteen minutes to an hour (no idea why) to finish, which is why I switched to Watson the server and ran it in Linux (Linux version).

If you use the Linux, you will need to compile it yourself, but it's honestly fairly straightforward. If you want to use command line, I suggest getting a look at the GUI first; the command line has more options, but you're kind of on your own to figure out how some of it goes together. On the upside, it can be set to batching, which is very nice.

I like MakeMKV because it's relatively simple. Bluray movies (feature only, no extras) of around two hours are 40G at 1080i with HD Audio; it goes up the more options you add in. DVDs run around 10G, but keep in mind that's without any compression at all.

Handbasket is the easiest compression software I have found, but it's not the best out there. Windows, Mac, Ubuntu and Fedora are currently available. I used to use the nightly builds when it was still experimental in Linux and when it ran, it required very little from me but boredom waiting for it to finish. Formats are mkv and mp4.

Speed depends on processor speed; my laptop thirty to forty minutes, my old laptop, four hours, but Linux on Watson ran it at a flat fifteen to twenty, and his processor isn't much better than my old laptop's.

I have third program recommendation, but it's--weird, and the user guide is very--something, and also, I can't remember the name. I'll look for it tonight. It has more options, but it's--complicated. In a fun way, yes, but weird. Also rips into .mkv.

If anyone wants to toss out their favorites in comments, do so! I'm in a software testing mood.

ETA: The current beta key for MakeMKV is here. While it's in beta, the developer isn't charging for use of it. The forums are pretty interesting to read as well.

When you know you've been coding too long.

var x = (condition)?option1:option2;

And here I have been writing my if/else statements out like a sucker. Are they stackable?

You know, there's a fair to good chance I am now thinking in variables. Goddamn googledocs and their addictive google apps scripts. Does anyone else play with them?

Note:

Sherlock the computer had a full system crash and is currently engaged in a factory reinstall beside me. I am panicking. Currently I am using Adam, whose y key is missing, except not, because someone moved the key itself to u and I am so glad I never look at a keyboard when I type or this could end badly.

This is like, balance for the fact that for the first time in eight fucking months, I was able to write. I can feel it.

...and recovery just froze.

I wrote this earlier in a spirit of sharing. It's like a fucking prophecy. Posting anyway so as to review the fact my life? A farce.

Anyway

Okay, the thing is? I'm all about being emotionally manipulated by my media. I like breaking into unabashed, unashamed sobbing. Obviously when I'm not wearing a lot of eyeliner, but whatever, eyeliner cannot compete with sheer emotional gluttony, mkay?

Fuck yeah, feel good, sob eyes out, that's how it works.

Mulan's Decision, Mulan - and every time, I start choking up when she strides to the altar and just lose it when she unsheathes a sword for the first time and her reflection looks back at her. I have watched this movie more times than is healthy and it's always amazing.

Mulan, Finale, Mulan - all of China at her feet. If you do not at least choke up, you have no soul.

Okay, in my defense, this movie came out when Child was two years old. I swear to God I was connecting to both mothers like whoa.

Two Worlds, Tarzan - the first time I watched it, I cried literally from the moment Tarzan's birth mother pulled her husband into the boat, sobbed through her kickassness building a home, dawwed through Tarzan's adopted mother as she played with her son, was nearly hysterical by the time her baby died and then heard Tarzan crying, and then I had a dramacomedy breather before, y'know, she kicked some cat ass and I had to get a cold compress for my eyes.

...wow, that sounds disturbing. One, Phil Fucking Collins, two worlds one family, but also, Child was two and I was taking a eighteen hour semester while trying to subtly break up with my boyfriend by dint of hiding from him. I mean--you know, that's a terrible explanation. Forget you read that. Go look at Tarzan's awesome Moms; time spent much better.

(We won't discuss my reaction to the movie Trainspotting, as Child was not yet one and I ended up dry heaving in the bathroom and refused to watch another second. If you've seen it, you know what scene I'm talking about.)

Union, Norma Rae - almost no dialogue, just that constant, clattering noise and then slowly, gorgeously, silence says more than a thousand words.

Okay, but this:

Harry's Sacrifice, Armageddon - AJ's hysterical grief fucking destroys me.

Final ten minutes, Armageddon - for kind of everything. Just One. More. Minute. Harry doesn't know how to fail. And um, Harry's last moments. The guy seeing his kid running toward him. Honestly, like, the second hour? I'll get dehydrated.

Eowyn Versus Nazgul,, LOTR - okay, I don't actually sob, just choke up.

Still Looking For

Apollo 13, mission control scene. Though my second favorite is basically the entire sequence of events on the ground; the engineers standing around a table with the NASA equivalent of duct tape and hairpins to create air filters ETA: jamie found the scene, here; Ken Mattingly doggedly testing ways to run on minimal power over and over and over until they fix it, and every moment people surprised themselves with how much more they were than they thought they could be.

ETA: Okay, how could I forget Be a Man, Mulan - okay, the thing is, thereis nothing about that movie that is not awesome.

Sherlock's backup is either frozen or trying to kill me. Goddammit.

We had relatives, food, and three kinds of dip because I was unwary and said, sure, I'll go with you to Central Market to get those last few things and there was brie.

Uninteresting Notes

1.) Why does Central Market hate me and rearrange their coffee every time I go in there? I am not ashamed of my coffee preferences, but I am conscious of the fact that in general, my economic class does not say shit like, "No, not the decaf free-trade organic Sumatran with the full body and high acid; I mean the regular free-trade organic Sumatran low-acid, shade-grown, full caffeine." I sound like a parody from Family Guy. It's not that I am mocking people who are environmentally aware, but I feel like a very specialized afterschool special for the Montessori crowd whose parents went very green five years ago and talk about their composting strategies.

( my love/hate relationship with central market )

2.) I finally got the bluray thing working on my server by dint of turkey-induced madness and strangely enough, what I'd been wondering about for a while.

( after this is a tragic story of my server, so you may need to read this for context )

3.) At 11:23 PM last night, dreamatdrew received this email from me.

...I think I'm uninstalling my entire server by accident

( this is where everything went to hell )

On the bright side, I've reinstalled ubuntu server so many times I could do it in my sleep and now I actually know which programs I need and which ones I don't and cause problems. When I get around to doing it, which I haven't, because my deep sense of betrayal is too great, and um, I slept super late.

4.) Tonight is the next great server install. Earlier this week my router was under DoS from bots and while telling madelyn about it and reading the logs while color coordinating them and whirlwinding through my securities and ports, she was thoughtful before mentioning she was glad I was enjoying myself so much. Last night, after a long pause, dreamatdrew told me he was glad I was having so much fun.

I can't lie; if Horace still has my media okay? I don't even care. This is fantastic. I'm not bored. I don't foresee in the near future I will be. What could be better than that?

Okay, so I said I'd do this weeks ago and now to stave off pre-surgery panic, I'm doing it now.

This is part one of a breakdown on how I went about building my server. Please for the love of God do not consider this doctrine. I pulled from like, dozens of places before I started. Also, we're working with less than a month of me doing this, so yeah, there will be inaccuracies since I'm still on my learning curve.

There is no such thing as doctrine, btw. Not in computer building.

First Things First

1: Anything computer be a server.

There are systems that are designed as servers for businesses and homes, but that is not the only way. The only things you actually need for a home server are a working computer and ethernet access (and server software). And that computer shouldn't be your only computer for obvious reasons. I've read designs done by people who basically nailed a motherboard to the wall--God that was cool--and fed the cables down into a small box of drives and seriously, that was the coolest thing ever. Same function. The word "server" is what the machine does in the end, not necessarily what it is, though it can be that too.

So disconnect there--server can be the computer being designed to be a server, or your extra computer that, what the fuck, you have some free time, let's play. Or you can do what I did and go to Fry's and go crazy. We'll come back to that.

2: Server software is not terrifying.

That is half a lie. If you don't want one, yes, it looks overwhelming. If you want one, trust me when I say, it becomes suddenly much easier just on sheer want. For those who want to work in familiar territory, there's Windows Server, which isn't terribly expensive and makes life easy. On the other end of the spectrum, there's Slackware that will make you twitch. There's Ubuntu Server, which I have and love, even when I hate it. You can actually buy mid-range small home servers with Windows Server installed for like, 500 to 700 when not on discount.

3: Servers and Network Attached Storage (NAS) are different things, but overlap functions. I'll be honest--the only reason I went server and not FreeNas was I wanted to learn Linux and I learn by doing. And I want to force myself to learn network protocol, and this was the best way to go about it. If all you want is to share your files among your home computers and friends in like, Tulsa and Toronto, NAS is perfectly sufficient.

Compare and contrast:

Home Server on Wikipedia

NAS on Wikipedia

Right. Now from there, let's go.

( you need parts: don't panic )

Okay, so those are your components. If anyone wants to correct/expand/add their recommendations, feel free to do in comments. If anyone wants to ask questions, feel free! I have no idea if I can answer them, but I will try or direct to someone/someplace that can. Next up will be building a home server for people who are kind of terrified, 2/3: you and putting it all together.

[I will be adding/expanding as I remember or think of more specifics as well. And pictures!]

( additions and footnotes from other commenters )

Seriously? No

So last night in an abrupt turn of events, Watson the server would randomly shut down after a few minutes. After downloading a sensor program (for all Linux lacks documentation that understands there's a wide open space between "idiot's guide for beginners" and "advanced kernel things involving five thousand commands", God do I love that insta!downloading of useful programs) my cpu said it was running 128 C.

That, I thought, was a bit high into impossible.

( cpus and heatsinks are evil and out to kill you )

( it's my own fault for wanting to like, try new things and stuff )

Gakked from sockkpuppett here, because for some reason it really hit me today while reading.

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others" -- Martha Graham

There is no law of conservation for creativity. It's not a use it or lose it kind of deal; don't use it and it's still waiting. So you know, do something with it.

Facebook Things

rivkat is talking here (briefly) about Facebook and the latest thing there on the brand new totally different filters and groups thing they introduced. And intuitive use.

At first, I was thinking it was because I was LJ/DW that Facebook was so weirdly counterintuitive and wrong for me; then a few months ago, I helped a former friend do his privacy settings (as at the time, I had been reading on nothing but privacy settings) and while he wasn't LJ/DW, or like, social networky much at all, he was a geek and a programmer and I was thrown a little by the fact that a guy who enjoys linux command line was thrown that much by the settings.

Contrast: my sisters came from MySpace to Facebook and had few transition issues. My mother was non-networky until Facebook and finds the entire thing a bastion of Spock's wisdom (disclosure: she paralled with GuildWars, but I'm almost sure Facebook came first). My son took to it like a duck to water, but let's be fair here, he's a fangirl geek's kid, so I have to measure him by other fangirl geek kids, and he's in the right age group to have friends doing it and so he must, too. He also was a user of online kids' MMORPGs and evony, so it's not like the brat was tabula rasa here.

While I get the first social networking site you use is often the one you bond with and becomes the measure by which all must be compared and everything, there's also Mr. Nearly Tabula Rasa Programmer up there who reacted to it just like I did even though he's not LJ/DW and that throws my curve. I'm not talking about those who are now comfortable with it after using Facebook for a bit, but that initial get to know you period--did it click and you got it, even if you didn't know it yet, or did you stare at it in horror and just fail to comprehend what the fresh hell was this?

With the exception of Scrapbook--which is an argument that no one should try to design things while high since I'm still way better at using it when I'm dosed with enough Vicodin to see energy trails and I am not saying brad was high, I'm just saying did no one check his pupils?--LJ and especially DW are very intuitive for me (DW even more so, but DW is a unique social networking site and I'm not sure fits on this curve at all due to both its history and its owners).

Thing is, usenet was intuitive, and so were mailing lists and interestingly enough, I went to read a post I did years ago on the transition to LJ from mailing lists through the lens of SV fandom and I'm kind of surprised to realize that all the differences are a lot more superficial in terms of how we structure interaction than I thought then. Not in like, structure, no, but in--I don't know if the word I'm looking for here is organization, but in how I think.

I'm kind of wondering, randomly, if someone from the blogosphere hitting Facebook and someone from the chans hitting Facebook to start an account the same day would have a similar reaction to it, because of their online social history. Okay, acafen, could someone thesis this already? Please? Because yes, my sampling size is small, but it's diverse enough that there has to be something I'm missing on why Facebook feels like a structureless hell of inanity before I actually have to look at my feed with a sense of growing horror.

Final Note

dreamatdrew sat up with me and kindly walked me through the first stages of installation of Ubuntu Server. Which means when I get home, welcome to command line hell. Where is my cheat sheet anyway? More adventures in what the hell will come later. Possibly with crying. When dreamatdrew won't see it.

In my defense, I went to Fry's for a SATA cable for mom's new hard drive, since I completely accidentally bought a bare drive. But they had i3-530 dual for 74.99 and tell me that I was supposed to walk away from that.

...yes, I'm cuddling it right now, why do you ask?

I'm going to build a home serrrverrr. I'm going to build a home serrrverrrr. At home! In my living room! From scratch. With Ubuntu! I AM AMBITIOUS.

This could be the greatest day of my life.

(Yes, I know the i3 is ridiculously powerful for a home server, but not if I use it as a media center. I went for only the basics now, but eventually I want to add a bluray player for streaming. This will run headless, so for now I'm interfacing through my TV's DVI port. I think for future access I'll go in through Adam the laptop.)

Note: In the first three minutes--I am not kidding you, three minutes--that I was looking at motherboards, no less than five salespeople wandered over to see if I needed help. It was nice later, though; I looked distressed about cases and vroom, instant assistance. Also 5.25 four bay holder for my extra notebook drives that have been languishing in a drawer for a while in need of love. The board allows up to six total, but it's hot swappable for later if I add a RAID tower. This is probably going to be my project of the week. I am stupidly excited.

This is so going to end in tragic disaster. I've never had the opportunity to build from the ground up before, and I keep bouncing between my bags trying to breathe without hyperventilating. I really have indecent thoughts every time I pick up the motherboard. Just. Mine. Will post specs when I am calmer.

Carry on.