Archive for January, 2008

The Tale of Genji – choosing a translation

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

I've heard about The Tale of Genji, and thought I might like to read it. However, there are a daunting number of translations available! They're enumerated in the Wikipedia article. Here's my rough summary: 0) Murasaki Shikibu - the original Japanese author. 1) Kencho Suematsu - first translation, considered ...

How to Export a Type Library

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

It had been awhile since I'd exported a TypeLib, so I had forgotten how! The world has moved on to .Net and its "tlxexp.exe" tool, which is for .Net/CLR assemblies only. 1) Download OLEVIEW.EXE the OLE/COM Object Viewer

Big Red vs Little Cinnamon Gum

Monday, January 28th, 2008

I remember these incessant Big Red television ads from my childhood: "no little cinnamon gum freshens breath longer than Big Red" To this day, I want to get my hands on that colorful, little, cinnamon gum! My mouth literally waters at the thought of it. Besides, who wants to chew a gum ...

XBox Video Encoding: AAC versus AC-3 audio

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

The XBox 360 can play back xvid/divx + AC-3 (or AAC), and H.264/x264 + AAC. I've noticed a distinct difference in audio quality between AC-3 and AAC, at both the default 128kbps and forced 192kbps AAC (--aencoder aac --arate 48 --ab 192). This is easily demonstrated by listening to the ...

uShare on Buffalo TeraStation Live for XBox 360 Video

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

uShare, a GeeXBox project, is a media server which is compatible with the new XBox 360 "Spring Update" media player capability. Running uShare on a desktop seems straightforward, but getting it working on such a lightweight machine as the TeraStation Live is a bit more difficult, particularly if you're ...

Using Handbrake to Encode Videos for XBox 360 Playback

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

I installed the Microsoft Spring '07 Update, allowing the XBox 360 to play videos encoded as MPEG-4 Part 2 (xvid/divx) and H.264/x264. After fumbling around for countless hours, I found handbrake settings that work with the XBox 360. Since all the terms thrown around become confusing (H.264, x264, xvid, divx, ...

Ubuntu With autofs and Infinite Recursive Directories

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

Trying to get autofs working on Ubuntu, I found that everything worked except that I could never actually get at the folder contents. Instead, I would get an infinitely recursive set of empty folders: jeff@ubuntu:~$ ls /smb/myserver/ backup/ info/ media/ pictures/ share/ jeff@ubuntu:~$ ls /smb/myserver/media backup/ info/ ...

Google Translate: Heath Ledger is the Spanish Tom Cruise

Thursday, January 24th, 2008