No, really.
I was just going to turn in when I realised this (whilst glancing at various covers in progress or Doctor Who encodes that are running on my machines).
If an alien in Who isnt humanoid (ahh "humanoid" = low budget week, must have been a double episode of take heart and Z cars that week) or a machine, cyborg or Dalek (yes, I know they are a cyborg of sorts) appears on the classic version of the show, then they almost always have supposed scales or seaweed or drippy stuff (see the silurians/krynoid below or google doctor who sea devil to see) i.e. its their "skin" ergo they're partially or totally naked.
Why didnt the designers give the inteligent aliens clothes then they would look like alens in alien clothes not someone in a badly fitting alien suit.
Ooookay, I think I may be a little overtired and thinking about this too deeply. I think I'll go to bed now......
Friday 19 June 2009
Up to date!
Now the blog's up to date its time to turn in. The PC (TMPGENC) is presently churning through re-encodes of "Doctor Who - Resurrection of the Daleks" from (hold on) oh, god, 1993! and I think it can get on with that whilst I grab 40 winks.
More to come soon.
Meantime, if you fancy your hand at the Dr Who cover photoshop challenge, or just want to see whats being done elsewhere, give The braxiatel forum a go.
More to come soon.
Meantime, if you fancy your hand at the Dr Who cover photoshop challenge, or just want to see whats being done elsewhere, give The braxiatel forum a go.
Printers...Why'd it have to be printers?
I've been lurking around IT for a while now. A while being, in this case, around 28 years (since my ZX81 in all its glory). In all that time from membrane keyboards, through hard drives that - literally - exploded when they crashed through weird plug in cards that never, quite, worked to today, nothing, NOTHING has caused me more pain that printers.
Back in the early 90's I used to install, maintain and code for chain / band printers (durango etc for those of you who suffered too) then it was big old lasers then the coming of the cheap and leaky ink jet and now and again dye sublimation and, god help me, thermal paper!
Now I have a colour laser at home, a hefty but compact beast, in the form of a Minolta 2300w magicolor. Its noisy but pretty fast and makes nice prints for business and fun (see the DVD cover entry below re my VHS conversions). What it doesnt like is moving. It REALLY doesnt like it.
Firstly it weighs roughly the same, give or take, as a small car. This makes moving it an unpleasant and, often, dangerous affair. I've now moved houses with this thing about 3 times, 4 if you include moving it from its original office location. However its only in the last move that something stopped working.
It decided to (and here I pause to say a jaunty hello to all those who just arrived after googling this - as I know now - common problem) start printing, feed the paper out 2 thirds of the way and stop with an error. Additionally, just for fun you understand, nothing would be on the paper apart from a few, begrudging smudges.
3 hours, much chaos and shouting and grumpyness later the thing was working again (pauses to do something superstious to keep it working) it now prints fairly nicely again. The problems?
1. I think the removal guys dropped it.
I'm not suprised at this. I managed to move the last time in a february snow storm and, after nearly killing myself the previous move, I asked the two rather more fit gentlement to move it. I dont think they quite braced themselves and I think it touched down with a little bit of a bump.
2. I think.... they dropped it again
See 1... again
3. These things partly work by using static and dust loves it
When I opened up the printer and took out its innards (you're saying gross now aren't you? You know this is a printer right?) I found a ton of dust on the transfer rollers and other really important bits. I'm willing to guess this was related to problems 1 and 2.
4. Solenoids
The little microswitches that tell the printer, "hey, theres some paper here, whatdaya want I should do with it?" at various points through the internal twisty route. These are very small and can stick especially when dusty or jarred (see 1,2 and 3 above). I gave these a good clean.
5. Toner
This thing takes 3 toner cartridges and a drum. The drum is around half way through its life and I'd changed the toner about 2 years ago (I don't print that much-call me a softy for trees). I swapped out a rather congeled (you're saying urgh now aren't you?) black toner cartridge and swapped in a new one thats been sealed up since I got it 4 years ago.
After then replacing a number of screws (at a gues around a million) I tried the thing and for now its working rather nicely (pauses to pat printer). Then the next day I went into work, sent some vital piece of work to the multi squillion pound networked colour laser/copier/tanning salon machine and..... it jammed up.
I really hate printers.
Back in the early 90's I used to install, maintain and code for chain / band printers (durango etc for those of you who suffered too) then it was big old lasers then the coming of the cheap and leaky ink jet and now and again dye sublimation and, god help me, thermal paper!
Now I have a colour laser at home, a hefty but compact beast, in the form of a Minolta 2300w magicolor. Its noisy but pretty fast and makes nice prints for business and fun (see the DVD cover entry below re my VHS conversions). What it doesnt like is moving. It REALLY doesnt like it.
Firstly it weighs roughly the same, give or take, as a small car. This makes moving it an unpleasant and, often, dangerous affair. I've now moved houses with this thing about 3 times, 4 if you include moving it from its original office location. However its only in the last move that something stopped working.
It decided to (and here I pause to say a jaunty hello to all those who just arrived after googling this - as I know now - common problem) start printing, feed the paper out 2 thirds of the way and stop with an error. Additionally, just for fun you understand, nothing would be on the paper apart from a few, begrudging smudges.
3 hours, much chaos and shouting and grumpyness later the thing was working again (pauses to do something superstious to keep it working) it now prints fairly nicely again. The problems?
1. I think the removal guys dropped it.
I'm not suprised at this. I managed to move the last time in a february snow storm and, after nearly killing myself the previous move, I asked the two rather more fit gentlement to move it. I dont think they quite braced themselves and I think it touched down with a little bit of a bump.
2. I think.... they dropped it again
See 1... again
3. These things partly work by using static and dust loves it
When I opened up the printer and took out its innards (you're saying gross now aren't you? You know this is a printer right?) I found a ton of dust on the transfer rollers and other really important bits. I'm willing to guess this was related to problems 1 and 2.
4. Solenoids
The little microswitches that tell the printer, "hey, theres some paper here, whatdaya want I should do with it?" at various points through the internal twisty route. These are very small and can stick especially when dusty or jarred (see 1,2 and 3 above). I gave these a good clean.
5. Toner
This thing takes 3 toner cartridges and a drum. The drum is around half way through its life and I'd changed the toner about 2 years ago (I don't print that much-call me a softy for trees). I swapped out a rather congeled (you're saying urgh now aren't you?) black toner cartridge and swapped in a new one thats been sealed up since I got it 4 years ago.
After then replacing a number of screws (at a gues around a million) I tried the thing and for now its working rather nicely (pauses to pat printer). Then the next day I went into work, sent some vital piece of work to the multi squillion pound networked colour laser/copier/tanning salon machine and..... it jammed up.
I really hate printers.
Cover me!
Oooh thats going to smart.. the pun that is.
I'm almost afraid to continue...
Well, ok, don't say I didnt warn you.
Remember I've been working on VHS to DVD from my old nightmarish stacks of VHS (if no you only have to scroll down a bit...go on.. I'll wait here, back now? Good we've been getting a little bored) sooo... once you have the video, author the dvd then what do you do with it?
Well mostly it goes in a 200+ zip case of DVDs to keep the things safe but with some (and here we're talking Dr Who) you want to do something special to keep this work on the shelf with the bought with real money discs.
So, if you like photoshop, you make a cover and to do that you need some artwork for the front. For various copyright and auction site related reasons (that I'm not going into - google if you want to know about fan cover abuse) I'm not going to put up the covers in their entirity but heres a sample of the photoshop work I've put together for some of the VHS conversions so far..
Click to go to my Flickr site for bigger versions..
Now those of you reading past entries (all two of you) will remember I said (queue Waynes World wibberly wobberlyness)
I'm almost afraid to continue...
Well, ok, don't say I didnt warn you.
Remember I've been working on VHS to DVD from my old nightmarish stacks of VHS (if no you only have to scroll down a bit...go on.. I'll wait here, back now? Good we've been getting a little bored) sooo... once you have the video, author the dvd then what do you do with it?
Well mostly it goes in a 200+ zip case of DVDs to keep the things safe but with some (and here we're talking Dr Who) you want to do something special to keep this work on the shelf with the bought with real money discs.
So, if you like photoshop, you make a cover and to do that you need some artwork for the front. For various copyright and auction site related reasons (that I'm not going into - google if you want to know about fan cover abuse) I'm not going to put up the covers in their entirity but heres a sample of the photoshop work I've put together for some of the VHS conversions so far..
Click to go to my Flickr site for bigger versions..
Doctor Who - The Awakening / Frontios
Doctor Who - Planet of the Daleks
Doctor Who - And The Silurians
Now those of you reading past entries (all two of you) will remember I said (queue Waynes World wibberly wobberlyness)
nothing thats on DVDAnnnd we're back in the now. So, if this is out on (region 2) DVD why the cover? Well, I have actually bought this one but fancied trying my hand at the cover to match in with the others I have on the shelf already!
Doctor Who - The Seeds of Doom
The tapes, they hurt my eyes!
So, yes, VHS conversion to DVD.
Firstly, let me be honest here. I've been playing with MPEG, MPEG2, DIVX et al for around 9 years now. I was making VCD's with TMPGENC with the best of them. I've fought with capture cards, played with sorting out GOPS had minor breakdowns with audio / video sync. In short, I know a bit about DVD encoding and authoring.
And still it can be a nightmare!
Mostly it's a lot simpler now. I have my new (old) SVHS VCR connected via s-video to my Panasonic E55 recorder. I record the VHS to XP (the Panasonics best quality mode) then extract the disc onto my PC and re-encode it from the rather noisy 704x576 captured size (with tracking noise and whatever the TV station was stuffing into the side overscan) into a cropped, tidy 1/2 D1 352x576. The audio is stripped from the original file and multiplexed into the new file and, finally I edit the file into episodes, tidy any messy VHS ad breaks and save the new files.
Of course I then author a nice DVD using DVD PRO and finally burn it to disc.
It's not even the time it takes to do the work, I tend to be a night person anyway (ask my wife in the morning, I'm not a nice person at 7am). No, to meander back to my point, it's the time these things have been lurking in less than optimum conditions.
I'm presently going through the stack of doom known as "The Doctor Who" and general TV boxes. These have episodes of shows that arent on DVD, no one repeats the show and weren't even released on VHS officially. Only recorded from the UK Gold 1994/5 repeat showings or Bravo before it joined the soft-porn brigade of channels.
And some of them are not well.
Some became victims of a nasty leak here or there, some where on inferior tapes which probably didnt see out the 90's and some, well some have mould on that would scare the good Doctor.
So I've begun the painstaking process of triage. Some of these tapes just wont make it, some I wont even try. Anything, anything thats on DVD now wont even be attempted (well, if its in good condition I may scan to the end of the tape in case theres a fun overrun showing the state of the TV at the time).
And once its converted, tested and backed up. Those tapes are finally, finally going to the dump!
Firstly, let me be honest here. I've been playing with MPEG, MPEG2, DIVX et al for around 9 years now. I was making VCD's with TMPGENC with the best of them. I've fought with capture cards, played with sorting out GOPS had minor breakdowns with audio / video sync. In short, I know a bit about DVD encoding and authoring.
And still it can be a nightmare!
(DANGER WILL ROBINSON - I WILL NOW GO INTO TECCYTALK)
Mostly it's a lot simpler now. I have my new (old) SVHS VCR connected via s-video to my Panasonic E55 recorder. I record the VHS to XP (the Panasonics best quality mode) then extract the disc onto my PC and re-encode it from the rather noisy 704x576 captured size (with tracking noise and whatever the TV station was stuffing into the side overscan) into a cropped, tidy 1/2 D1 352x576. The audio is stripped from the original file and multiplexed into the new file and, finally I edit the file into episodes, tidy any messy VHS ad breaks and save the new files.
Oh, did I say finally?
Of course I then author a nice DVD using DVD PRO and finally burn it to disc.
Hey come back, I think he's finished burbling!Now that sounds hard. Well, it's easy once you know how and it doesnt take too long but the main issue here isnt technology ... its time.
It's not even the time it takes to do the work, I tend to be a night person anyway (ask my wife in the morning, I'm not a nice person at 7am). No, to meander back to my point, it's the time these things have been lurking in less than optimum conditions.
I'm presently going through the stack of doom known as "The Doctor Who" and general TV boxes. These have episodes of shows that arent on DVD, no one repeats the show and weren't even released on VHS officially. Only recorded from the UK Gold 1994/5 repeat showings or Bravo before it joined the soft-porn brigade of channels.
And some of them are not well.
Some became victims of a nasty leak here or there, some where on inferior tapes which probably didnt see out the 90's and some, well some have mould on that would scare the good Doctor.
So I've begun the painstaking process of triage. Some of these tapes just wont make it, some I wont even try. Anything, anything thats on DVD now wont even be attempted (well, if its in good condition I may scan to the end of the tape in case theres a fun overrun showing the state of the TV at the time).
And once its converted, tested and backed up. Those tapes are finally, finally going to the dump!
Slow time and times past
Ooooh catchy title.
Well, I'm back. Point of fact I did't go away just had a very, very busy time. Yes, I did get back from the holiday - in fact I'm going away again in september - changed jobs (not company) and have had, well, generally another year of family life. So, with that out of the way what am I up to now?
Many, many, many, many (yes, they get the picture) moons ago (well 15 years actually - eep!) I had a great interest in TV.
Well, still do in fact.
Probably too much based on certain aspects of my... (get on with it!) .. ah yes!
I used to like TV. So, VCRs being mostly all there was at the time, I had two and tried to capture every cult scifi / fantasy show going onto them. I succeeded horribly well and had around 600+ VHS video tapes.
Ranging from almost all the surviving Dr Who (Classic show - not the new stuff) courtesy of UK Gold in startling analogue sparkly satellite quality via M*A*S*H through to the Bryan Brown show "The Wanderer" I had stacks of the stuff.
Now, 15+ years later some of this has fallen by the wayside, some has been jettisoned when moving and moving and then moving again. Some wasnt allowed to be kept by members of my immediate family who have immesurably better taste than me but some, ahh, some is still with me.
Sure, over the past 5 years I've meant to convert it to DVD or DiVX or XVID but, with VCR failures, capture card issues or simply the fun of being a daddy, 38 and in full time employment with additional work outside of hours it, well, didnt happen.
So now I've finally started to set about these tapes with a passion. I've set up the (now retired from daily use) DVD Recorder in my office I've hooked up the VCR I bought to do this 5 years ago and, thanks to some forums, I've picked up a rather nice JVC SVHS deck to speed things along.
So now to the fun...
Well, I'm back. Point of fact I did't go away just had a very, very busy time. Yes, I did get back from the holiday - in fact I'm going away again in september - changed jobs (not company) and have had, well, generally another year of family life. So, with that out of the way what am I up to now?
VHS (or what does rewind mean daddy?)
Many, many, many, many (yes, they get the picture) moons ago (well 15 years actually - eep!) I had a great interest in TV.
Well, still do in fact.
Probably too much based on certain aspects of my... (get on with it!) .. ah yes!
I used to like TV. So, VCRs being mostly all there was at the time, I had two and tried to capture every cult scifi / fantasy show going onto them. I succeeded horribly well and had around 600+ VHS video tapes.
Ranging from almost all the surviving Dr Who (Classic show - not the new stuff) courtesy of UK Gold in startling analogue sparkly satellite quality via M*A*S*H through to the Bryan Brown show "The Wanderer" I had stacks of the stuff.
Now, 15+ years later some of this has fallen by the wayside, some has been jettisoned when moving and moving and then moving again. Some wasnt allowed to be kept by members of my immediate family who have immesurably better taste than me but some, ahh, some is still with me.
Sure, over the past 5 years I've meant to convert it to DVD or DiVX or XVID but, with VCR failures, capture card issues or simply the fun of being a daddy, 38 and in full time employment with additional work outside of hours it, well, didnt happen.
So now I've finally started to set about these tapes with a passion. I've set up the (now retired from daily use) DVD Recorder in my office I've hooked up the VCR I bought to do this 5 years ago and, thanks to some forums, I've picked up a rather nice JVC SVHS deck to speed things along.
So now to the fun...
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