disobey.com

BoingBoing points to a walkthrough of getting DivX encoded movies to play on OS X. One player it doesn't mention, which I use, is MPlayerOSX, the ported Linux utility mplayer. It's played nearly every movie I've ever thrown at it, and the same people also provide a DVD ripping tool. One annoyance: there doesn't seem to be any seeking control (ie., forward, reverse, go to 45:31, etc.). Either way, the doc does have one tasty tidbit: how to install a DivX codec for Quicktime.

As you can tell by the dates on the last ten or so blog entries, I've been missing in action for quite a while. See, I've been working heavily on Mac OS X Hacks, an O'Reilly book that has my name on the cover. I finished (late) the last few things I needed to do last night, and I've slowly been pulling myself out of the mire of "forgotte... nope, ignored projects". This means email, Gamegrene, AmphetaDesk, and more. Here's hoping that DNN gets some sweet flava flav too.

First order of business: catch on email. Second order of business: long TODO list for Gamegrene.com. Third order of business: renew AmphetaDesk vows. Fourth order of business: movie database (an unspoken project that has begun to pick up steam in my cortex).

A new version of Apple's iCal (1.0.1) is available, with "major performance improvements, enhanced importing, and bug fixes". I've not actually used it yet, but if there are "major performance improvements" (particularly between switching views), I may be able to finally replace PandoCalendar.

There's nothing better than unsubscribing from a bunch of mailing lists when you want to clean out cruft from your Inbox (or heavily filtered folder hierarchy). Good bye multiple Mac mailing lists, rdfweb-dev, webstandards, and more. Now I'm back down to only 200 emails a day, 50 of which are spam, the others of which require personal attention. Better.

I watch a lot of... "quirky" movies, mostly those that others aren't all too interested in (if you're curious, become an Amazon Friend, and I'll send you discounts on future purchases). One of the better movies I've seen recently is Series 7: The Contenders (2001), ending a year long search for a copy.

I had read about it in a magazine, did lazy searches here and there, and saw a VHS edition (blech!) and "showtimes" at Amazon (it did have a theatrical release, but not around here). A few weeks back, I happenstanced upon it, sitting dejected on the bottom shelf at Best Buy (along with Session 9, which was alright). The premise: the next stage of reality shows like Survivor is not about Nature killing the contestants, but rather, contestants killing contestants.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's not a genius idea - anyone with a healthy dose of cynicism woulda chuckled over that idea long ago, bringing back memories of Running Man, A Most Dangerous Game, Faces of Death, etc. Unlike those, however, this movie is satirical, tongue-in-cheek, and it works, especially with the soap operatic twists (of which revealing would ruin the moment). It's filmed like a TV show - you're watching a marathon, and it's occasionally interrupted with endcaps for commercials (that are never shown, save for a deleted scene of a public service announcement). The ending is pretty interesting too - exactly what I'd suspect from a television show of this caliber.

Best piece of ephermera not in the film? "The Standings are in the Obituaries" - a phrase seen only in the extras (the exact one I can't remember - damn my fading memory!). It's a clumsy statement rolling off the tongue, but I got a chuckle out of it. I'd recommend at least a rental for the curious.

I'm not too worried about authenticity here, but some quotes from Osama's purported Letter to America had me chuckling:

(viii) And because of all this, you have been described in history as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go ahead and boast to the nations of man, that you brought them AIDS as a Satanic American Invention.

(5) We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for your goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins.

I just had a good chuckle over both (I should probably preface that statement with a bunch of backpedaling explanations, but we'll wait until the inevitable "Morbus is a terrorist!" emails)...

The Missing Chapter from The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick:

When famed hacker Kevin Mitnick wrote his book on computer security, The Art of Deception (John Wiley & Sons, 2002), the first chapter was autobiographical in nature. It was included in the advance galleys that were sent to reviewers, but when the book itself came out, that chapter was not included.

Welp, I can't say I did good with my plans. From about 6:30 to 7:30, I fiddled with mp3s (and did again from about 9 to 11). In between that time, I messed around the secret O'Reilly stuff, but mostly spent time upgrading and patching a new installation of Windows 2000 on a different machine (whoooO, my gamepad is a doorstop now! Rockin'!). Maybe I'll do better tonight (hahahahahah). Say it with me: sigh.

So, I've got craploads of stuff to do, and no desire to do anything. Instead of doing it, I'll write about my plans for tonight, and then maybe report back to see how horrible I do. From 6 to 7 (it being 6:26 now), it's random time. I'll probably do something pointless like fiddle with my mp3 listings (although, I do have a lot of new coding to do in that regard for others)... From 7-8, I think I'll write some more secret things from O'Reilly. From 8-9, I'll work on some code for Apple. From 9-x, I'll go back to more random crap. Sigh.

Heh, heh. Structured Procrastination:

All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it.

Good read.