Another Portable Media Player

Okay, one more portable media player for our readers. (I know, I know, I am enjoying this DiVX stuff, *WAAAAAY* too much.) This one is the MediaGate MG-25. This time, instead of being a DVD player that can read DVD-ROMs with DiVX files on it, it is a portable hard drive which you can load with DiVX, DVD files, MPEG2, MPEG1, or MP3 music files and then you can hook directly to a PC monitor or a regular television and it will play like a DVD player with a huge capacity! This is very cool. In the space of about 2 iPods, you can have 40 to 80 movies from your collection along for any and all of your trips away. Plus, this lets you have a standard bevy of movies available to you on your own TV, without having to get up and change DVDs.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for REAL!!!

If you saw the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie this summer, you saw the plot device of all plot devices invented by Douglas Adams: a little talking book with useful (and otherwise) information about everywhere in the galaxy. Well, DNA himself tried to make something like this with his H2G2 website, but now a British Company has gone a step further. Their new technology - currently aimed squarely at the tourist market - gives you location-specific information for any point in its database, based on the position it senses via GPS.

This has a lot of potential. I have friend who is quite into geo-caching - the practice of leaving noteworthy items at specified GPS locations, for other hikers and geocachers to find - and he loves the treasure-hunt nature of the thing. This has the potential to do the same for data, and even more to allow cities to increase tourism (and advertising revenue) by steering visitors to the hot spots.

A MAJOR Data Security DON'T

Wondering why Austalia is awash in counterfeit drivers licenses, all of a sudden? (They aren't, but it is not a bad opening line.) Well, it might have something to do with this story from a penny-wise hardware hacker who bought some ultra-cheap hardware at a govenment auction, and found that the Motor Vehicles division hadn't bothered to wipe any of their data or software. Among the other stuff he found were records of tickets issued to motorists with lots of those little bits of information which would make identity theft so easy.

Remember friends, be sure to WIPE your hard drives before selling them... or at least sell to someone you know or trust lacks the technical softistication to steal your data!

Yet Another Serenity Trailer

I know, I know. Those of you who don't care about Firefly are probably getting sick of my posting links to Serenity trailers. But there are a lot of us who do, and who are therefore quite excited about this new one which shows off more of the humor and more of the plot of the movie. Why do we have to wait another 2 or 3 months?!

Worst... Writing... Ever... for 2005

Check out this years Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2005 Results. This is an annual contest to come up with the worst possible opening to a novel, which shows obvious writing skill. My favorite must be...

"The night resembled nothing so much as the nose of a giant Labrador in excellent health: cold, black, and wet."

Now, no comments, please, about how often you have thought Mod-Blog should win a lifetime achievement award in such a competition!

Mmmm.... Free MPEG4 Encoder...

Okay, so now you have bought that cool Portable Video device we mentioned yesterday, but have realized that lugging your entire DVD collection around is not your idea of fun. You don't like DIVX for the bad rap it gets, because of its use among pirates, but you want a chance to fit many movies onto a single disk to bring along with you when travelling. What is an enterprising geek to do?! Check out HandBrake! Originally made for the long-expired BeOS, it is a DVD-to-MPEG4 encoder that is fast, efficient, and FREE for your Mac. How good is this thing? How about fitting the entire original Star Wars Trilogy onto a single DVD-ROM? Very cool! And it will help keep that travelling bag a little bit lighter.

And if you are NOT ready to invest a portable video device, don't forget that you can use QuickTime or VLC to play those same movies from that same DVD-ROM on any laptop, for free! (This all assumes you OWN the DVDs you are ripping for that DVD-ROM.)

UPDATE 7/30: If you do use HandBrake, be sure to use the AVI option. The MP4 encoding that works much better on QuickTime is not compatible with the Portable Video player below. I learned this the hard way.

Ward and Metty In 30 Years...

...Okay, in Ward's case, maybe 10 years. ;-)