Game over and format fiddling

Another day, another load of time spent playing Civ II.  That game is addicting.  I kicked everyone’s ass and won the game, of course.  I read more about ancient Chinese history too.  I’m such a geek.

I just updated FembotWiki, and now it’s time to get to bed.  But not before I bitch about Windows software for a while.

I was trying to make an iPod-format video for someone.  He had bought Paul McCartney’s new live one recently, and it came with a free download of the video on iTunes.  When he plays that video (a full concert) on his iPod, it always crashes at one spot, and he has to re-load the video (after rebooting the iPod) and scroll forward to past the point where it crashes.  And THAT’S an official release.

I need a drink…

Mmmmm… sweet water.  Not sweet actually.  Not sweet lemonade either… yeah, sweet lemonade sweet sweet lemonade.

So I managed to get an xvid video for him… but that’s not exactly iPod size, so I needed to convert.  For some reason, Video Converter (WinFF) in Linux wasn’t up to the task.  I kept getting an error that no such directory exists.  Since I’ve never used that application for anything… I thought I’d try a windows application.

I had read about some video converters on LifeHacker not long ago, so I found that page again and downloaded the one voted to be the best of 5.  I also downloaded the 2nd best… and another…. until I downloaded MediaCoder iPod.  The reason I tried three fucking programs before I got one to work is that they need the Microsoft .NET framework to work.  Who the fuck uses .NET for programs?  What, are you fucking crippled and retarded?  Lazy fucktards.

Since my “music” computer, the one with the actual Windows XP has no internet connection, and since I don’t want shit like .NET polluting it, I needed to find something else.  MediaCoder iPod worked… but it only encodes in 4:3 aspect ratio.  That means the video I will return to the guy who made the request for me to get him a new iPod version will look all stretchy and like everyone is real tall and skinny.

Meh.

I will have to give that live performance a listen though, from me jumping and scanning through the avi file, it looks like a good one.  I hope I can have that level of energy when I’m 67.