SpiceWare
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Blog Comments posted by SpiceWare
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Had a couple weird issues occur, so I've added an addendum to the blog post about it along with extra instructions for those who are testing with Stella. Hopefully somebody can get a screenshot of it, which would help in figuring out what went wrong.
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How do you get closed captioning?
I've only done subtitles once or twice. I have this bookmarked, Add Subtitles to DVDs Ripped with Handbrake, so I probably followed those instructions.
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I've rewatched the first season of Nurse Jackie. For the most part the picture quality looks good, though on a few occasions the quality dropped or the frame rate stuttered - I suspect Showtime was dealing with higher than expected network traffic at those times, or that it was a network congestion issue local to me here in Houston.
Showtime's watchlist could use work in regards to series. The series themselves are added to the list, but when you select one you're shown ALL episodes for that series without any indication of where you left off.
Not a major problem though as I'm already using iTV Shows, an app on my iPad, to keep track of where I am in all the OTA series I'm recording. I use that because I prefer to watch a series in order and the reruns aren't always broadcast in the correct order - for instance Burn Notice skipped episodes 2 and 11 of season 6 on their last go around, so I'm waiting for those to be rebroadcast before I start watching season 6.
At this point I plan to keep the subscription for Showtime active as they've got a number of series I'm behind on and a number of new series that look to be interesting.
I'll check out HBO Now again when Game of Thrones returns next year. Like Showtime, they have a number of other series that look interesting but I won't keep the subscription active if they haven't fixed the picture quality problem.
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For my initial weight loss I did a low-carb diet. Some people think that means "all the meat and cheese you can eat", but it's not. What you really do is change your meals so that instead of them being meat, carb, lc-veggie you have meat, lc-veggie1 and lc-veggie2. (lc being low carb
)My doctor didn't think that would work, but after doing so my cholesterol meds went away and my blood pressure meds were reduced in dosage.
Now that I have that treadmill desk I've increased the amount of carbs in my diet without any weight gain. I typically stay around 165, though I did just return from a 2 week vacation and am up to 173. I'm not concerned though as those 8 pounds will drop off rather quickly once I return to my usual routine of walking 10 miles per workday.
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I've been migrating to LEDs as I replace bulbs as well. Cree recently came out with a fluorescent tube replacement that does not require you to rewire the fixture, a friend picked one up and said he likes it. When my kitchen bulbs next need replacing I'll put those in, but it'll be a while as I'd put in new tubes before hearing about Cree's option. One thing I'll need to figure out is if their T8 bulbs be used in place of the T12 bulbs I have - the spacing of the power pins appears to be the same, but there might be other compatibility issues.
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That's correct, for the parade the road is closed off to traffic.
I've seen the Santa car around town all year long, so it's a daily driver and thus must meet the safety requirements.
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If the vehicle is a daily driver it needs to be street legal, with requirements probably similar to Germany's TÜV. The requirements are done at a state level, not country. For people residing in Texas, the Texas Department of Public Safety requires an annual vehicle inspection. The requirements can even vary within a state, such as additional emission testing based on where you live.
I don't believe that's required if the vehicle is only used for events like the parade. -
Good to know, thanks!
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I think Amazon Prime might use Silverlight on a Mac, but I am not certain.
It is. Yahoo Screen is using Flash though, and it looks just fine in full-screen mode. Added a couple more screenshots to the blog entry.
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All right, thanks SpiceWare
Found the drive - no bB setup for jEdit so I will need to work that out before I can post it.
Turns out I did have jEdit on my Mac Pro configured for ColecoVision; however, I'd renamed my edit modes and the configuration was still under assembly-z80 instead of ColecoVision assembly. I fixed it, but launching the emulator didn't work - based on the error message I think I need to install X11 support.
I'd renamed the 2600 mode files to Atari 2600 assembly and Atari 2600 batari BASIC. I believe I changed the names since assembly-6502 could be used for any 6502 development, so it wouldn't make sense for it to launch the 2600 emulator. Likewise launching the CV emulator wouldn't always make sense for assembly-z80.
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How can I compile and run a batariBasic code?
Looks like I'd gotten sidetracked due to the Houston Arcade Expo(see comments in this blog entry) and forgot to wrap up the jEdit series afterwards.
Based on this blog entry I had it working for ColecoVision but not batariBasic; however, I just tried a CV example and jEdit's not configured for it (a bB test didn't work either).
This was back when I'd just gotten my new MacPro, so I probably didn't transfer those settings over from my old MacBook Pro, which my brother now has. I did save the HDD from the MBP though, will look for it tonight after work - hopefully I had the bB configuration figured out.
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The quality of the 1 pass transcoding I do via handbrake can vary quite a bit depending upon the settings and the source material.
In reading their forum for new model, the transcoding has a number of settings including none. You configure the tuner with a default setting while the applications, if they know about it, can request a different setting. So the Mac could be set up to receive the original MPEG2 while the iPad could receive a H.264 stream. That could be beneficial in and of itself as the iPad often struggles with HD MPEG2 channels.
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Watch that video on YouTube itself, the embedded version is scaled down which ends up hiding the problem.
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Alright! I just did my first DVD. I need to pay attention to the settings. I just hit go and it worked. I am streaming a movie from my NAS right now through my Xbox 360. But it is not the best quality so I'll try again later.
There's definitely a learning curve involved with Handbrake - if you're seeing something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLSu9Iuevmk
you need to learn how to use the deinterlacing and/or decombing options in the filters. After Handbrake has parsed your material, open up the Preview Window. You may have to move the selection point. If you see something like the new Addition 3 I just added to the blog entry then click settings and try changing the deinterlace setting and hope you get Addition 4 as the result.
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I just started studying this. Unfortunately, my only laptop with a bluray drive is dead, so I'll have to buy an external. Does the ripping program you reference above give a completely lossless copy of the bluray?
Yes, the rip is the exact data from the Blu-Ray without the encryption. You can optionally exclude things like extra sound tracks and closed captioning data. I normally deselect everything except the English track.
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Submitted a third issue request, specified that I'd tried their "common steps". This time I pointed out that when the video was "inline" in the browser window, with descriptions and such around it, that the image looked OK for the size and that the problem only occurred on the Mac (and not Windows) with all supported browsers and only when switching to full-screen mode.
Success - finally got thru to a human!
Please be assured that our teams are aware of this issue and working hard to resolve it as soon as possible.
I've added 3 new images - the "inline" video, the "inline" video scaled to 1920x1080 and a closeup of the scaled image. It looks just like the prior screenshots so I suspect the Flash player on the Mac isn't changing to the higher resolution video stream when switching to full-screen.
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Submitted a second issue request, making it clear the issue was with the browser on the computer. Got back the canned response of "common steps" to check for all updates, try other supported browsers, etc.
I did so - even installed Flash so I could try it in Safari and Firefox. Same results in all. I then tried it on my work computer in Internet Explorer. Success - so the problem is Mac specific.
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I submitted an issue to their support team about the picture quality and must have confused somebody - their response was:
The HBO NOW service does not allow you to connect your device to a TV or external display using HDMI cables or other connectors. For the best viewing experience see, “What devices is HBO NOW compatible with?”.
So I replied back with
From your site - supported devices: HBO NOW is available through supported Web browsers on desktop and laptop computers.
The bad picture quality I’m seeing is on my computer, a Mac mini.
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There's no connection between the 6507 and the ROM. The connections are this:
6507 <--> ARM <--> Flash (ROM) and SRAM (RAM)
The ARM emulates everything about the cartridge, not just the DPC+ data fetchers. This emulation includes the bank switching hardware, any expansion RAM, and the ROM - this includes the connection between the 6507 and the simplest 2K and 4K ROMs. -
It's too busy to run custom code while also feeding the 6507. From cd-w's blog entry, Perfect Harmony:
The software on the harmony cart is also very straightforward. It doesn't attempt to synchronize clocks with the Atari. Instead, it just sits in an permanent loop, servicing requests from the Atari as follows:
1) Wait for an address request from the Atari (A12 high). 2) Read address bus (A0-A11). 3) Fetch data from flash memory at the requested address (may perform bankswitching here). 4) Assert data on the data bus (D0-D7). 5) Wait until there is a change of address (A0-A12). 6) Repeat forever.
This approach is necessary as the cartridge port doesn't output the 6502 clocks (phi1 and phi2) and also doesn't have a R/W line to distinguish between reads and writes. The wait for A12 at the beginning has the effect of keeping the ARM and Atari loosely synchronized.The ARM processor runs at 70MHz and the Atari runs at 1.2MHz, which sounds like the ARM would have plenty of overhead. Unfortunately this is not the case. The flash memory of the ARM takes 4 cycles to access, and the ARM can only perform I/O at a fraction of the full clock speed. Also, the data must be placed on the Atari data bus within a short time of A12 being asserted. It works out that the ARM is only just capable of keeping up with the Atari. If the Atari were any faster, then this approach would not work. Fortunately it does work, and batari has managed to implement all of the main bank-switching schemes on the Harmony.
emphasis added.
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Kingsman was awesome, worth your time to see. Yeah there was violence, but a lot was tongue in cheek like the exploding heads.
From here (though I don't recommend you read that if you might see the movie, lots of spoilers).
Even before them, you pushed some boundaries by exploding an enormous amount of heads. Was the visual always going to be the colored smoke we see?
With the heads exploding, I wrote the line saying something like, “And then all of the bad guys’ heads start to explode in a Busby Berkeley firework display.” So I always imagined it to be beautiful and brief. I went to three effects houses because the first two kept going what I call “Cronenberg-Scanners style,” sort of messy with brains. I said, “Guys, that’s disgusting. I don’t want that. I keep saying I want surreal and beautiful, like the nicest fireworks.” I wanted people to forget what they’re looking at and enjoy it. Three effects houses later, it was the first thing I previz-ed and the last thing we got ready before delivery. Once we got it right, people seemed to really like it. I haven’t had one complaint about it, which is a good sign.
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Interesting trick! I've 1352 of the 1502 pieces collected - having attending PRGE, CGF, and the Houston Arcade Expo helped a lot.
I also bring the 3DS along whenever I stop at Barnes & Noble, they have one of those WiFi hot spots that supports Streetpass.
Hmm, I see they're doing an international event right now. Of course that would happen while I'm stuck at home w/out a vehicle! My S2000 is in the shop getting a new top installed.
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Ant-Man - Spoiler-free movie review
in (Insert stupid Blog name here)
A blog by Nathan Strum
Posted
Thanks for the review, wasn't planning to see this one but probably will now.