Summer Fun
Posted by jdodson in Uncategorized on July 2nd, 2009
My sister and her husband are coming over today for a swim and dinner. Should be fun.
Updated Version and Skin
Posted by jdodson in free software, life, tech on July 2nd, 2009
Updgraded to Wordpress 2.8 and snagged a new theme. Its a nice upgrade. Been meaning to do this for awhile and I had time over lunch.
Thanks for your patronage.
Bugs Are Crawling Over My Skin
Posted by jdodson in Uncategorized on July 1st, 2009
Thats not some strange title… Oh its real all right. I decided to go out this evening with my laptop and be outside in the nice weather instead of going to bed right away. And because of that bugs are crawling on me. Its not too bad but I have to occasionally drive them away. This post might be cut shorter than it would otherwise due to that. Well that or some stray raccoon trying to get in my trash bins. Which they have never done but would be a good night to start because I have a pool skimmer nearby and I bet they are mortally afraid of that sort of thing.
Times like this I find myself wanting to write but not knowing what I really want to write about. Theres the fact that I found Street Fighter 4 for the PS3 at a local pawn shop for $20, which is a steal. There is the fact that I unlocked most of the characters with little effort on the easiest mode and got completely decimated in the medium difficulty. There is the fun factoid that I have been really enjoying swimming in our new pool. Have quite a bit of fun summer plans that are close to starting.
But all that is fun but doesn’t really seem to be what I want to write about. I often write about video games I am into, which all told is quite a bit of fun, but thats not all I do. If you read this and thought about my life it would seem all I do is consume digital enterainment. All told, I really do, but I do more than that.
Did you know that I have been “binging” on classical music? All told I am freak for it and its all I have been listening to of late.
I guess the writerly correct thing to do is list off a bunch of things I have never talked about then sparking you to think to youself “ah, well thats news to me.” But thats a tired writing mechanism. Its safe, but its writing what I was trying to avoid, which is talking about myself in a way that conveys it best. I guess the outcome would be, “I am what I do.” Which is partly true. I guess.
When I was in High School and our Church Youth Pastor was trying to scare us to be good Christians he always said “You are what you do when no one is watching you.” Thats a interesting thought and I reject it because it seems overtly simplified.
When no one is watching me I generally seem to be more at peace because its just me. I really don’t need to spend much time thinking about much save if the dial on my stereo needs to go to 15 or 20 for this particular Vivace song. Its pretty peaceful.
Ive heard people say the kind of person you are is in the friends you keep. Id say thats total garbage but then again my friends are pretty cool. They are fun loving and nice people. But we are not the same. We have similar likes but often it stops there. We make totally different life choices most of the time. Some of my friends like sports and I don’t understand that at all. Well, shoot you know all of them do actually now that I think about it. So I guess I don’t really resonate with that really.
Often times when I write I enjoy building up to something and then tearing it down. I really enjoy doing that in quite a few areas, writing being one. Music being another. I have written songs where I have a flow and then I break it lyrically because it seems funny or just jilting.
I did not buy Superman II because it seemed like a bad time.
Never Gonna Give You Up
Posted by jdodson in Uncategorized on June 15th, 2009
Check out this story for the context to this post. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/06/14/1649237/YouTube-HTML5-and-Comparing-H264-With-Theora
So Google is basically getting flamed by a sea of “free sofwtare” and “software patents are bad” people for going with h264 in the new HTML 5 video tag on YouTube instead of OGG/Theora(not saying that position is a bad one). By now you either are interested or are confused. Feel free to drop out of this post now or continue reading, I don’t discriminate on like or care for this current screed 
Basically this current flamewar has two sides(I think the all caps are fair to both sides):
FREEDOM LOVERS: U KNOWZ TATS HTML 5 VIDEOZ TAGZ?????Q WELL DO IT OGGZ KTHXBI N YOUTUBEZ111
GOOGLE: OMG WE HAVE LIEK 50 BAZILLION TERRABYES OF KITTEH VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE ALREADY ENCODED IN LIEK FLASH N H264!!!!!111ONEONELOL! IF WEZ REENCIDE AS A OGG IT TAKE MOREEE SPACESZZ! WE GOOGLE WE LIMITED HD SPACCESSS12!!! PS OGG TEH SUCK!!!!!
FREEDOM LOVERS: OMG U AS GOOGLE TEH BENEFITZ FROM OPEN SNTANDARDSIDAZATION HTML. U BUILD BUZINESS ON OPEN WEB1!!! FREE URZZ VIDEOSZ BIIIII TEH OGG!!!
GOOGLE: NO WAYYZZZZ… WELL MAYBEE SOME DAY1!!!!!!!!111
FREEDOM LOVERS: U COULSDS CHANGE TEH VIDEO FREEDOM ON DAY -1 WITH U DOINK OGG ON YOUTUBE, PLZ KTHXBI!
GOOGLE: DID YUZ C MY STOKCK VALUATIONZ? I TEH RICH!
FREEDOM LOVERS: I MAKE MY OWN TOAST!
So basically, Google is taking the “we already have stuff encoded in H264″ and freedom lovers saying “you could change the world with OGG and freedom is better than patents.”
Funny thing, I agree with both points so much I am not sure which I think is better. If I had to pick one, I guess id side with the “freedom” arguement only because I wouldn’t want to pay patent royalties to do video on the web. All told it seems H264 is a superior codec.
The BluRay Disc’s I Don’t Own
About 3-6 months ago I purchased a PS3. It was a really good deal and all told I have wanted one for a year or so. Basically it came with Guitar Hero 3 and a $50 gift card. I don’t play Guitar Hero 3 much, but my little sisters seem to love it. I downloaded The Top Gun theme of the PS3 store for $0 and thats really fun to play.
I bought the PS3 primarally to upscale DVD’s as the Mac mini doesn’t do a great job of that. I also bought it to play the new HD movie format BluRay. I thought by now id own a ton of BluRay movies but I only own one and the reason I bought it was because it was $10. I bought the original terminator on BluRay.
I don’t own more BluRay movies because they are so bloody expensive. That and I can’t rip BluRay like I can rip a DVD. Occasionally I rip a movie to watch on my iPhone or whatnot. Movies I legally own and all that. I heard Handbrake is going to add support for BluRay so when I get BluRay on my computer and Handbrake supports BluRay rippage that will give me another reason to upgrade.
Because of the cheapness of DVD and the fact that it looks pretty good on my HDTV I am sticking with that for quite some time. Francesca and I already re purchased quite a few movies on DVD we had on VHS and I don’t want to do the same thing, yet again, on BluRay. Well maybe some movies…. Like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings perhaps….
I dig BluRay, I don’t dig the price and the unability to transfer the movie to another device on my network. DVD’s DRM begrudgingly allows me to copy it and that increases the value of DVD because its great to do more with what you own.
A Few New Albums
Posted by jdodson in Uncategorized on June 8th, 2009
Recently I have aquired a few new albums. Most I bought used on Amazon, average price I paid somewhere around $3.50 for the CD. The rest are freebies I aquired from some net source.
U2’s Pop – Used on Amazon for $3 or some such. Good album. I remember listening to a few tracks in high school when it was released. I remember people giving U2 quite a hard time for releasing this album, but I find it a good U2 album. All told, I believe I like it more than U2’s latest album, No Line on the Horizon.
Savoy Jazz 2009 Free Sampler – Picked this up on Amazon for free(as in price). The music is very very good however when they transferred the music to digital or whatnot, they introduced A TON of pops and clicks. This is above and beyond the normal record noise and is VERY hard to get through. Again, the songs are incredible, the pop/click distractions are not.
More will come later.
Top 20 Search Strings for May
Posted by jdodson in Uncategorized on June 6th, 2009
Occasionally I check my logs for interesting information, like how many hits I get and what people are looking for on my site. Thought it was worth sharing what a few people have come to my site look for:
1 6 17.65% jon dodson
2 4 11.76% johnny tremain
3 2 5.88% bad weed
4 2 5.88% deftones saturday night wrist album cover
5 2 5.88% legend green dragon dodson
6 2 5.88% why do the baby boomers think they are owed something
7 1 2.94% dobson john wou
8 1 2.94% entitlement generation
9 1 2.94% entitlement ruining young people
10 1 2.94% greatest generation entitlement
11 1 2.94% he raged at the world at his family at his life. but mostly he just raged!
12 1 2.94% how to manage the entitlement generation
13 1 2.94% i nerdnite john dodson
14 1 2.94% j dodson
15 1 2.94% j.dodson
16 1 2.94% jdodson
17 1 2.94% limbaugh transcript 5/28/09
18 1 2.94% ocaho john dodson
19 1 2.94% openarena v0.8.1
20 1 2.94% quake 3 v0.8.1
My Hate Entered The Room
Posted by jdodson in offhandstrangity on June 6th, 2009
