Tag: geek

Categories
Explained

Analyze: iTunes 6.0 Video Files

I had some change to blow from a previous gift certificate on iTMS, so I decided to buy an episode of Lost and see what interesting stuff I could find.

First, the main summary in iTunes:

I think the listed bitrate means jack (see below QT screen); very notable is that this has FairPlay version 2 DRM. Also, file type is `.m4v`.

Nothing terribly surprising here, although it’s nice to see proper track numbers on a per-episode basis. I wonder if we’ll lose the “Album” and “Artist” labels for TV shows in the near future, they seem a little inconsistent.

“Remember playback position” is checked by default, so they act as bookmarkable files. The “Video Kind” field is interesting; I obviously can’t select a value here, but on the two videos I did have in my library (both episodes of Teen Homicide), I can only pick from “Movie” and “Music Video”. It would be nice if I could choose “TV Show” for, you know, if I add my own TV shows.

Now, going outside of iTunes:

The path is unsurprising given the metadata (I use `~/Music/` for my music directory), so no tricks there. Failing to find fun here, I pulled it open with Quicktime Player:

Here we can see the proper bitrate (693.96 kbps), dimensions and framerate, and most amusingly, the metadata for the description of the track – which is totally unexposed in iTunes once you buy a show – or at least a chunk of it, anyhow. (This data IS available in the store, as the description.)

Above all else, I am fairly impressed with the quality, although like everyone else, I wish the video was a touch larger.

Categories
Debated

Saving The Day One Day Too Late

The big Apple news today was news that many people took as hell freezing over: [the no-button mouse is dead, long live the no-button mouse](http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/). Just over five years after the introduction of the “Apple Pro Mouse” (the white, lozenge-like mouse), Apple finally joins the modern input device revolution and introduces the [Mighty Mouse](http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/), a sort of four-button-plus-scroll-nub thing, retailing for $49.

A handful of dear readers put two and two together and pointed out to me that this could be taken as a timely divine intervention to solve my [busted mouse issue](https://vjarmy.com/archives/2005/07/role_reversal.php). And I would agree, except for two problems.

One, it’s a corded mouse. Now I can use a corded mouse – at work, where I’m striving to keep my desk clean on a regular basis. At home, I frequently have to deal with debris, spindles of disks, and most of all, a certain cat who loves to sit on my mousepad. The slack always ends up getting pinched, and this drives me up the wall. As such, I’ve switched to USB cordless mice and have no desire to look back for my home use.

Two, along these lines, I just purchased a new Microsoft Standard Wireless Optical Mouse yesterday at Best Buy. It ran me, after various discounts I had accumulated, a whopping $15. This is well under half the price of the Apple mouse. I’m not against spending money when there’s functionality to be had, but I get the bulk of the functionality I need out of this mouse for less than a third of the cost.

For the Mighty Mouse to win me over, it really needs to come in Wireless, and I really need to see some really worthwhile functionality or neat hacks for it. Otherwise, it’s just yet another Apple peripheral for me to ignore.

Categories
Found

Poor IRC Jokes Just Happen Naturally

First off, apologies about the Blosxom tutorial being delayed. It’ll be up soon – today was a bit kooky.

After an oddly-timed work day, I took off this afternoon for JFK, making my first ride on the Airtrain to get to the JetBlue terminal. Not that I was flying – I was merely meeting up with Suw for the short layover duration she had before she had to fly off back to London.

Having some time to kill when I got there, I logged onto IRC through my Sidekick so I could keep mutual friends up to date on her arrival. Now, IRC over the Sidekick requires going through SSH, and the signal in the baggage claim is lacking at best. Still, it managed to hold for most of the time I was waiting before arrival.

A bit after Suw appeared (the silly girl snuck past me, and then had to double back to find me), and we were waiting for her suitcase, I checked my Sidekick and noticed I had been knocked offline. I shrugged, not really caring to keep the connection open at this point.
But apparently I missed an unintentionally funny quit message, given my location:

[17:22] *** RemyAtJFK quit ("Lost terminal")