themaskedcrusader.com

I know it's been a while since I updated my blog, so I thought I would start.  I have been pretty busy. We tore down a shed in our yard, tore down a deck, hauled them both to the dump and have, so far, built a new shed in it's place.  Next is the replacement deck, which I'll probably start in a week or so.

I have also redesigned my website.  If you are a regular visitor (of which I am the only regular I know) then you'll notice the change. Also, I built my wife's website (www.builtuponaschalk.com) and those both have kept me busy too.

Last night, we were all playing on the piano and both my wife and my daughter asked me to teach them a tune that I play all the time.  When I was young, before I started piano lessons, my mom taught me a little tune that she learned as a child.  I don't know what the name of the tune is or anything, but I know how to play it.  I've never even seen sheet music for the tune.  I tried to teach my wife the tune by showing her the fingering and notes, the way my mom taught me, but it didn't go to well, so I went looking online for some free music notation software and I found it!  It's called MuseScore.  I sat down and in about an hour of learning and playing with the software, I was able to write down the little ditty that's been stuck in my head since I was 8.  I give it to you here as both sheet music and a midi file.  Like I said, I don't know who wrote it, but I've arranged it here, so I hope you enjoy.

• Sheet Music "Happy Tune" in PDF
• Midi File of "Happy Tune"
• MP3 of "Happy Tune"

I want to clear up a few things for the American people about this health care reform.  A lot of the democrat, liberal citizens of this country think the proposed reform is great and that it will help the country.  While I agree that a reform is necessary, the proposed reform is incorrect, and I'll give you reasons and examples of misconceptions as to why.

First, we live in America, The land of the Free.  Never before has there been a law on the books where there is a penalty for NOT doing something.  Every law before the health care reform has affixed a penalty on actually committing an action.  A murder is penalized for killing someone, if you don't want to suffer the penalty, don't kill.  A police officer will write you a ticket for speeding, you don't want the ticket, don't speed.  Never before has a law said "If you don't buy an orange, we'll cut your knees off" but the health care reform does! It penalized an American for NOT purchasing health care.  What are the penalties?  An annual $695 fee, plus a percentage of your annual earnings as well as the IRS now has abilities to garnish wages, withhold returns and the like.  All penalties for NOT doing something.  They've taken away your freedom, and isn't that what this country is built upon, Freedom?!?  Even a unemployed, homeless beggar is penalized for not buying health care.  He is penalized with the same fees as others, except he's given credits to pay the fees because he is poor.

Another misconception is that everyone gets healthcare, a blanket coverage which allows everyone to just walk into a clinic and be seen.  This is not the case.  The universal policy is one of last resort.  As mentioned above, you must purchase your own policy, and if you cannot purchase a policy on your own, then you can pay the penalty and premiums for the gov't policy.  Then you can be seen.  In so doing, Medicare and Medicaid will suffer because instead of these programs, the sick and afflicted will be under the Universal policy.  So, the liberals who are on medicare and think this will help you, you are gravely mistaken.

Reform will bring prices down! - Wrong! Have you ever taken an Economics class? If not, there is a principle in Economics that's called Supply and Demand.  If the supply is low and the demand is high, prices go up.  If the supply is high and the demand is low the prices go down, and if they are both high or low, prices generally remain the same.  How does this apply to Health Care Reform and Insurance Premiums? Listen to this little allegory:

You are one of 10 people selling oranges in a farmer's market.  Only oranges are available, nothing else.  Everyone set's their prices to $1 an orange.  Passers by, if they feel the need, buy an orange and you make a living.  Every now and again, one of the sellers will get a good batch and mark the price up because the orange is extra ripe and tasty.  As the day wears on, your supply diminishes and you go home.

This goes on every day until one day when a man in a black suit shows up and with a box of oranges and a gun.  He tells everyone that they must purchase an orange or be shot in the leg.  If they don't purchase an orange from you for a $1, they can buy a wrinkled old one from him for $3. Suddenly, there are thousands of people forced into buying oranges  that they don't want, but your supply hasn't changed.  

You know this rush is coming again tomorrow and you know the black suit man is charging $3 for an orange, so you get with the other orange sellers and jack your prices up to $2.95 since it'll still be cheaper than the black suit man's oranges. Your prices have just tripled, and people are forced to buy.

This may sound silly, but it's what the Health Care Reform demands.  The oranges are Insurance Policies, the sellers are the Insurance Companies, the black suit man is the government and the bullet is the penalty for not buying a policy.  Did you see what happened to the price of the oranges (the insurance policies)? they all went up because it is now compulsory to purchase an orange.  It's like a monopoly that everyone can participate in.  Sure there's still competition, but their prices only have to remain below the government's set price for their policy.  Are you starting to see that this is a bad thing?

My final point in this discussion is the Abortion part of the Health Care reform: Abortions are paid for by tax-payer money.  I have a real problem with abortions for a lot of reasons, but the biggest is that it is murder.  Murder is defined as "the deliberate and illegal killing of a person".  What is a person? Someone who has been born or can a fetus still be a person.  My daughter was born at 25 weeks gestation and is still alive today.  She was a person at 25 weeks, regardless if she remained in the womb or not.  A better definition of Murder is the "intentional stopping of the heart of a human being, no matter the age."  If you screwed up and got pregnant, killing that child is not a viable answer.  There are people on adoption lists who want children. There are mothers out there that desperately want kids, but can't have any of her own.  Your selfish decision to murder your unborn child is not only hurting you and your child, it is also hurting the thousands of adults who want kids, but cannot have any.

The battle that Republicans have with the bill is not all about the health care part of it.  I am totally in favor of a reform of the health care industry. Put pricing caps in place, regulate premiums, do something, but making a broken system compulsory for the public is not the answer.  The biggest pain is that your freedom has just been robbed from you.  You now cannot make a decision on your own, but have to yield your health and your body to the government.  Do you like how the DMV runs? Do you like the 4 hour wait for a renewed driver license?  How about the social security office where you have to wait 4 hours just to fill out a tiny application to get your card reprinted. With universal health care, this is what doctor offices and emergency rooms will be, long queues of people who desperately need help, but just can't get it because the whole system is run by the government.

Please think about it when you vote this November. Together we can repeal this heinous bill and develop one that works without taking away America's freedoms which we hold so dear.  It's not so much about Health Care anymore, it's about our freedoms in the Land of Liberty!

This past weekend was kinda low key in terms of weekends at our house, but I have a couple things to share.

Woot! There is this website called Woot.com where they (the all knowing "they") post deals on a daily basis.  Sometimes multiple deals a day.  As far as I understand it, the concept is this: The guy gets a huge shipment at a screaming deal, turns around and blogs it on his site and sells off his stuff at an amazing discount.  Ok, sometimes it's not an amazing discount, but it is a deal.  A couple weeks ago, my friend bought a $20 USB digital television tuner for his laptop that works great. He can now watch television while commuting on the train! I've been watching for a while too. Sometimes there are toys, computers, headphones, gadgets - everything you can think of.  I haven't been too interested in the objects he had for sale until this weekend.

I usually don't buy something just because it's there with flashy bulbs and neon signs.  I like to do my research and get the best item for the money.  This past weekend, I bit.  The woot was for the Kodak Theater HD Player - a set-top box that streams video from your computer to your HDTV, similar to an Apple TV.  

Let me stop right there for just a second.  I have several things from Kodak and absolutely love the company.  I have one of their all in one printers. it's great, the ink is cheap and Kodak's customer service is wonderful.  The print head went out in my printer, I called Kodak and they sent me a new one free of charge.  My Kodak easy share camera died after a few years of use. I called Kodak and they gave me a 15% discount on the purchase of a replacement.  So, my experience with them as a company has been, historically, great!

So, I looked on their website for this product to see the price and the features.  The price was pricey - MSRP is $300 for this puppy.... but on Woot, it was $50, so I got one.  When it comes in, I'll give a full review.  I'm excited because it's supposed to be able to play videos on my HDTV from my computer.  Now, my PS3 should be able to do that, but the video streaming across the network to the PS3 is choppy and unwatchable.  I believe that has to do with the crappy WiFi card in the PS3, because my other electronics (laptops...) all play streaming vids from my server just fine.  I bought this device to do what the PS3 currently fails to do.  More to come once the item gets here.

I'm fat.  I know it - basically everyone else knows it too.  Today, I decided to use a little of our Tax Return money to buy a Wii fit.  We actually looked around quite a bit for one, but everyone was sold out.  We even talked to the guy at Best Buy and he told us that they are almost impossible to order.  The demand is just too high and the supply is not.  Obviously, Nintendo knows about economics, because the law of supply and demand means prices are high.

I saw a Wii Fit a couple months ago (the original one) for about $80, but when we went looking, the cheapest we could find Wii Fit Plus was $140.  So, yeah! it's an extra $60 for the Plus in the name, Sheesh.  We did find it online at walmart for $138, but it was sold out.  Today, my wife asked me to go to the big Wal Mart to get some supplies for FHE, and I heard over the intercom that they had Wii fit in stock. So I ran back to the Electronics department and found a lady carrying one.  I asked her if it was claimed and she told me no.  "I want it then!" I said and was pleased to see that it was only $100.  so, yes I got it.

We got it home, Unboxed it and hooked it up to our Wii.  I went through the introduction, which weighs you and gives you your BMI.  Now, I am not a proud man, so I'll share that my BMI is 33.  I've put in a goal to work off 10 pounds in 4 weeks.  The darn game called me Obese... can you believe it.  I'm only 70 pounds overweight D: So, here's my blog to get back into shape.

It's actually a fun game.  Be sure you wear shoes when you play it though, as it does a number to the soles of your feet.  I played a few of the balance games and then raced my wife in a 100 yard dash (I'm sure it was longer - it was the Short Distance Free Run).  I decided to take it slow in the beginning, so I only worked out for 15 minutes today, and worked off about 1/5 of the cupcake that I had for dessert. Hey, it's a start.

I'll keep a log here for me, because the only reason you're reading this is because you stumbled upon it. But I am interested in how much this actually works.  If I can lose weight while playing a game, yay for me.  We (being my wife and I) have already planned out diet conscious meal menus, so eating sensibly and working out with the Wii might actually provide us with real results.  Only time will tell.

I have a PlayStation3 and I have 2 children under 8 years old.  I also have a lot of DVDs that are getting scratched, so I decided I'd test out how to format files for my PS3 so I could watch movies without having to dig out the DVD and hope it works.  All the tools I used are free and after testing the quality, I've found what I think it the perfect format for the PS3.

First, the PS3 has a lot of different formats that it uses that are nice, but not all. It's actually quite picky as to the format of the file.  The formats can be found here.  I decided that I want all my video in an MP4 container, so that limits my capabilities as to what format I can use. 

First: Ripping the DVD: The first thing to do is to Rip your DVD from the disk to your computer. The best free tool for this job is DVD Shrink. DVD Shrink decrypts the CSS of the DVD and can package it to ISO format, which is what we want. You can dload the app from Softpedia, a simple Google Search will get you to the application.

Simply install the application, Start it up and put your DVD in the drive.  Next you want to Re-author your DVD.  Click the Reauthor button and drag the main movie (Title 1) to the right column.  Then click the compression settings tab again and uncheck everything you don't want.  Typically, you don't want audio tracks in different languages or subtitles in different languages.  Leave the compression ration on Automatic.  These settings rip the DVD with the highest bit rate which is good for the next step. Should rip between 15 minutes to an hour depending on the speed of your computer.  When you rip, be sure to choose Image File (ISO) - this is the format we'll need to convert it to a file for your PS3

Second: Installing MediaCoder: The application we'll use to transcode the movie to MP4. You'll also need to download the Nero AAC Codec as this is the format the sound needs to be in.  Install MediaCoder, then unzip the Nero Codec files (in the Win32 folder in the archive from Nero) to the \Program Files\Media Coder\Codecs.  (I'll put all of this into a video and upload it to youtube with instructions.) 

Third: Transcode: We are now ready to transcode.  Follow these steps to Transcode the file for use in your PS3:

1. Start MediaCoder.
2. Click File > Add File
3. Browse to the ISO you ripped in Step 1
4. Click the imported File in the upper left list in Media Coder.
5. In the bottom section, you'll set your settings
   1. Click the Video Tab, Choose H.264 next to format. Set the BitRate to 2000 Kbps 
   2. Click the Audio Tab, Choose Nero Encoder next to Encoder and LC-AAC as the format
   3. Click the Container Tab, Choose MP4
6. Once the settings have been chosen, click on the Summary tab on the right to view the estimated output.  The video should be H264 at 2000Kbps.  The Audio should be LC-AAC. The container should be MP4.  If this is all correct, click the Start button in the top toolbar.
7. The Transcoding process should take about as long as watching the video for good quality results.  The resulting video will be approximately 1GB per hour in size and will be almost the same quality as the DVD itself.

Finally, Some Information: Here is the answers to a couple Questions you might ask:

1. Why did you choose MP4 and not DivX?
   1. The Divx 7 codec uses the H.264 algorithm which is far superior to other codecs, especially when it comes to compression vs quality.  since the MP4 with H.264 is the same as an AVI with Divx 7 (H.264) the quality should be identical, but the MP4 is slightly smaller in file size.
2. Why did you choose 2000Kbps for the video bitrate?
   1. Retail DVDs are encoded at about 9800Kbps video bitrate.  This allows for ultimate video quality. However, they are generally released in Standard Def, or approximately 720 x 480 pixels in resolution.  The PS3/HDTV both will upscale this image in real time to HD (Usually 1280x720).  I don't know the algorithm that the PS3 uses to upscale, but it is far superior than allowing your computer to do the upscaling.  Media Coder can upscale video, but it ends up grainy and ugly, especially when played back on the PS3.  So this is what I did: I took my copy of "Big Fish" and ripped it 5 times, One at 1000Kbps, one at 2000Kbps and so on.  I then played each of the files on my PS3 next to the DVD to see which one was the closest in quality.  There was significant quality differences between the 1000Kbps rip and the 2000Kbps version, while there was little improvement on the 3000, 4000, and 5000 files. Also the file size difference was notable.  The 1000Kbps file was 1200MB, the 2000Kbps file was about 2200MB, and about a gig each.  So, I determined the best quality for the file size was the 2000Kbps bitrate and ~2GB file.