Anxiously Awaiting

While cruising Slashdot I came across this blog post from Ed Bott about the future of Windows Product Activation. So apparently there is an ugly rumor going around that the Windows Genuine Advantage Notification update will become manditory for all Windows machines this fall. And by mandatory, I mean your computer will stop receiving critical security updates if you don’t have it installed. Check out this response sent to Ed from Microsoft after he inquired about the WPA mess:

As we have mentioned previously, as the WGA Notifications program expands in the future, customers may be required to participate. [emphasis added] Microsoft is gathering feedback in select markets to learn how it can best meet its customers’ needs and will keep customers informed of any changes to the program.

Also there are several other posts and comments talking about the “quality” of the WGA software that is being pushed out with Windows update. Several users reported crashes and/or blue screens, or that their CD-keys were flagged as already in use. Although some of these reports could be anti-Microsoft hate, there could be legitimate reasons to not install WGA on your machine..

I have several questions for Microsoft about this fiasco. First off, why is WGA pushed as a critical Windows update? Up until now participating in the WGA program has been completely optional. Most novice home users will have automatic updates turned on, and by default Windows pulls down critical security updates. How would you feel if you come home from work to find that your computer has been royally screwed by a critical update that is supposed to help you? Better yet what if this program erroneously flags your legal copy of Windows as pirated and gives you 30 days to get legal? The three hours I would spend in the MS Technical Support queue would be a great prep time for my yelling voice ;).

In the end the WPA initiative is making Micro$oft look like the big ugly green giant they truely are. I haven’t installed WPA on my machine, and I probably won’t ever. Even if the “kill switch” is pushed in September. Hell some people I know are running on XP SP1 just fine! My computer will probably be seeing a port to Suse 10.1 Linux in the near future. I’d rather go with software that is built by honest, hard working developers and not the code slaves of the Microsoft mines. So as a user, I charge you to go tell every Windows user you know about Microsoft’s plan. Raise enough ruckus and maybe Microsoft will put the breaks on this very bad idea.

No, not Transmission Control Protocol. The Telecaster Project. Remember this post? Anyway. I brought the old girl to ATL with me and opened her up to see what I was up against. Ironically, it turns out that there is no way to put a humbucker in the bridge position without some secret routing. I’m not comfortable with that, so scratch the original pickup plan. Introducing the new pickup plan:

The Neck Pickup

Yep. I’m still going with the Fat Bastard in the neck position. I have been cruising the Telecaster forums and Harmony Central and most people say that their favorite pickup config is a P90 on the neck. We shall see how this monster sounds when I get it wired. I asked the only guy that reviewed the Fat Bastard on Harmony Central some questions, and turns out he has an extra that he would be willing to ship me so I can test it! Sweet deal!

I am slightly worried that I might have to rout the neck pickup position. There appears to be enough room in there for the FB to fit. Let’s hope that its not too fat. Else I drop the cash for a professional routing job.

The Bridge Pickup

My two options here are either a Rio Grande Dirty Harry for Tele bridge or a Fralin Steel Pole 43. I think I’m going to stick with Rio Grande to keep the pickups balanced and matched. The DH has semi-P90 output, so it shouldn’t be too far behind the FB. This pickup position is still wide open for debate, but will lean more toward this pickup as I get close and closer to the purchase date for my pickups, unless I find a better choice. Right now I am just collecting the miscellaneous hardware parts I need (to be covered in the next post on this topic).

Control Electronics

This is the only easy part of this project. I need two 500K Ohm potentiometers, a 0.01µF capacitor, a three way selector switch, and an extra input jack. Since the neck pickup I am using will be really hot I chose to go with a two volume control wiring schema. This will allow me to dial down the hotter pickup when I need to, and I can do the cool Les Paul ’stutter’ by turning one pickup all the way off and slamming the switch back and forth.

I went with a different style of input jack because it appears to be alot more stable than the traditional Telecaster jack. I will have to drill some holes into the body of the guitar, but no worries. They will be hidden. I also splurged and dropped the cash for some straploks.

Total Investment so Far:

• 2 x 500K Ohm Potentiometers
• Custom B/W/B Pickguard (Humbucker compatible)
• Vintage Black Control Plate
• Straplok Strap Locking System
• Black Brass Telecaster Knobs
• Custom Jack Cup for Telecaster

I hope this guitar sounds amazing. It’s a helluva lot cheaper than buying a Les Paul, but it is a compromise. I love the Tele tone anyway. I can invest more money in a decent amp. Can we say, Orange AD-30?

Next time: Hardware. Vintage sexy or back in black?

I have finally figured out how to effectively and consistently convert VOB’s to AVI’s. To some of you haxxors, this is old news, but to me it’s good news. See, I used to use a nifty little utility called Dr. Divx to encode my DVD’s to AVI, but they trashed the old version and the new one will only convert to DIVX file format. I don’t want my file in DIVX format, I want AVI format with DIVX compression. Yes, there is a difference.

For those of you who have absolutely no idea what I am talking about, lemme ’splain. The DVD’s you own are nothing more than a big ol’ disc of files that hold all of the frames of a movie and the synchronized audio stream(s). There are a couple of different types of files on each disc, but the important ones are the Video Object (VOB), and it’s cooresponding IFO. Now, you could just pull down the VOB file to your hard drive and watch the movie by loading it up into a supported player. Most software DVD Players, VLC player, and Windows Media Player Classic all have capabilities to play VOB files. Unfortunately, since VOB’s are a raw format, they are freakin huge. One episode of Firefly was over 2.0 GB in size, and larger movies might be around +3.5GB. Which means if we have a large series with many episodes, like say House, we would need around 2.0GB x 20 episodes = 40.0GB of space to hold one season. Granted, space on computers these days reach the Terabyte (1000GB) range, but 2GB per episode is a huge waste of space.

So to fix this, we have a wonderful mechanism called compression. The two big compression codecs out there are DIVX and XVID. Codec is just an abbreviation for compressor decompressor, which means that DIVX and XVID are ways to communicate with a compressed file so we can get the information we want (like frames and audio streams). Using one of these codecs, we can usually deflate a 2.0GB episode of House to around 350MB, and lose almost no quality. That puts the total space for all of season 1 to around 7.0GB; which is over a 570% decrease in size! You can go even smaller than that, but at any less than 170MB per file the AVI’s start looking boxy–which is called artifacting.

The biggest thing that I have noticed from my ripping experience is a degradation in the quality of the audio stream. I’m not sure if this is caused by the software I am using, or if it is simply a limitation of the compression itself, but the audio sounds flat. It doesn’t make much sense because when I pulled the VOB I made sure to get the high quality audio channels as well. No matter. As I learn the nuances of the software I am using I’m sure I will get better rips.

Hopefully you learned something about how DVD’s work. If you too wish to learn how to copy DVD’s to your HDD, do some googling. I also suggest Doom9. That’s where I learned most of what I know, and they can point you in the right direction. If you kinda know what you are doing, check out Gordian Knot. And for the n00bies, check out Auto Gordian Knot. The hardest part is getting the VOB file from the DVD.

[note: When learning to use AutoGK, make sure you cruise the forums. There is one particular problem where you have to run a registry file included in the AutoGK directory to fix a problem with the conversion process. Basically if your conversions are dieing because VobSubMod cannot open a particular AVI file, then run the registry merge proxyoff.reg located in a subfolder of the AutoGK directory.]

My quiet times are getting better. I managed to get three of the five work days =). One particular verse that stood out to me was this one from 2nd Peter:

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

2 Peter 3:9

This verse struck me as a wonderful theme for my life, and the life of any convicted Christian. It stands true that if God was not patient with me then I would most likely have been struck by lightning a long time ago. By being patient with His people, God gives us time to grow and learn from our mistakes. Given the difficulty of living a true devout life this is a very valuable concession. Instead of death comes mercy. Instead of vindictive revenge comes love. Instead of disappointment comes discipline. All these concepts God is, was, and ever will be. Note that everything listed are attributes of hope. God is love, mercy, and discipline, and out of these traits spawns hope. We thrive on hope!

Thank God that He is patient with us. I know I wouldn’t be.

I have just arrived home from an amazing show: The Demonhunter Undying tour.

Ben, Cookie, Daniel, Maggie, Derek, Nikki and I left Blairsvegas around 3 for deh ATL. We picked up Holly at Kennessaw and wandered over to Barrett Parkway for some Dinner. We settled on the Olive Garden, but that ended up being a mistake. We waited for a solid 45 minutes to be seated. Our waitor sucked and took forever to do anything. I guess when you are in a hurry you notice the little things like not having a refill within 5 minutes of finishing your drink. Anyway, we got to The Masquerade in time to see the end of Spoken and we missed August Burns Red Completely. That was a bummer, but we still got to see Zao and Demon Hunter!

I have heard Zao’s music before, and I wasn’t to hot on it when I first heard it. They were much better in concert than on CD, but I still didn’t like the way the guy sings. It just gets on my nerves after a while. Demon Hunter was absolutely amazing. Despite some vocal tonal issues here and there with harmony (which is not unusual for live shows) they performed above and beyond what I expected. They played all the songs I wanted to hear, and even some old school stuff off their first album. I was also very impressed with the end of the Spoken performance. Josh has their CD, and I like their music, but they had a presence that was phenominal. It’s a shame we didn’t get to see Spoken’s full set. Their lead singer was the most tonally correct of any of the bands I heard too–if you don’t count the lead singer of Zao. His singing style allows him to cheat.

Right now I am completely soaked in sweat and rainwater; my ears have that heavenly ring that occurs only after a good thrashing from a high watt sound system; and I sound like a 14 year old because I was screaming my head off the entire show. I am badly in need of a shower and a nap. This show rocked, and it makes me look forward to Muse on August 9th!