I picked up a Bell expressvu reciever as well sunday, and plugging the s-video into it makes the signal look shit. The bitrate looks to be about 2-3 mbit showing blockiness and mpeg noise.

I hadn't noticed this problem before, and the signal had always looked good through coax, surprisingly. Will give it a few days and see what the deal is. Last item remaining is a video card with s-video out.

I also won a $20 gift certificate to Virgin megastore for coming up with the name "Perfect Strangers" for our new program to acclimatize new employees to the company. I suggested it because of how hilariously stupid it sounded. What a neat place to work.

After getting vic to act as video guinea pig, I picked up a 27" Sony tv at Futureshop of all places. LD stopped carrying this one, so I was left with little choice.

The choice of tv came about after trying out Radioshack's (this story is scary with those two stores being mentioned already) s-video switch which produced no noticable drop in quality to the tv. So rather than pay $1100 for the Panasonic tau I'd been eyeing (mainly due to it's abundance in inputs) I dropped just over $600 for the sony and am satisfied with the picture.

The very beautiful girl at coo coo coffee was wearing a display case of a shirt this morning. My coffee had never tasted better.

I suggested to svea that smoking would reduce the weight of her baby and make childbirth easier. For some reason, various people in the office regarded this as bad advice.

Vic tried my latest mpeg4v2 encodes and proclaimed it "best internet ever". Says that some of the reds are ~5% weaker than the mpeg2 encodes I did, but at half the filesize, it's hard to complain. Also using 192kbit lame encoded mp3 for more better audio.

After months of expectation, my buddy vic was finally laid off today. EI looks like good fun. Seems like a high school summer all over again but you still get money.

Installed a g550 on his comp tonight and tested some more vids. 4mbit mpeg2 looks awesome, but mpeg2 audio is not so good. Will try better mpeg4 encodes, or lower bitrate mpeg2 with mp3 audio.

Nothing spells justice like a Desert Eagle.

Picked up Final Fantasy:TSW on dvd today. Was hoping for a better transfer than it is, but there's some noticable noise on high-def tvs and monitors. Don't see how they screwed that up. Digital to digital transfers should encounter little to no noise from what I know.

Downtown Vancouver is the most best place to see cute japanese chicks without actually going to japan it seems.

After a 3 month hunt for shoes that weren't ugly as shit and expensive as a good looking hooker, I finally picked up a pair of simples today at pharsyde.

It amazes me that shoe makers have forgotten about people who want shoes that don't look like a rice rocket. It also amazes me that nike can sell shoes for $230 and that people actually buy them.

My simples are comfy and were $70. I'm not looking forward to finding my next pair of shoes.

Been doing a lot of testing for choosing a codec to back up dvd source until a dvd burner is an affordable option.

Using my brother's G400 and a 32" trinitron tv for testing, mpeg4v2, unfiltered @ 640x480 seems to be the best option for tv. Filtered (brightness, saturation, intensity, noise, smoothing) works better for screen playback, but causes some major quality issues for the tv.

High bitrate mpeg2 looked great, but mpeg2 audio is not as good as mp3 by a big enough margin that I wanted to stick with mpeg4v2 if the video was acceptable. Mpeg4v2 is also almost half the size, so I can pack a lot more video on a cdr.

I've been thinking about career a lot lately. I've been working as a internet making guy for a bit over a year now and things are starting to get boring. Was thinking a move to Japan while I'm unburdened would be cool. Or maybe keep working on video production/compression at home (the way I learned internet making) and go for a move into that. Maybe I just need some time off to stop thinking about work.

Sang is leaving us for our toronto office. Sad times. No one freezes children's toys like he does.

Fran hooked me up with an official Famewhore t-shirt. Megadope.

I've been becoming increasingly less happy with my adsl connection, but not for the usual reasons. When I first switched from @home, it was heaven. I finally escaped the massive packet loss I used to get with Rogers.

But, I don't game much anymore, and the 1.5mbit cap is starting to show since shaw took over the local @home service and actually started providing promised speeds to some people I know using it. They max out their pipes at over 300kb/s while I top out at 150kb/s.

Since I have my own mail service now, the providers is all about speed and reliability, and Telus doesn't seem to be doing that great in the reliability department these days either. It'd be weird to return to @home after switching almost a year and a half ago.

Been working on compressing some buriguri videos from their region 2 dvd, and I'm realizing more and more that low bitrate video is ass.

I need a dvd burner so I can make 4-5mbit videos and play them in my pioneer and leave the blockiness that svcd (2.6mbit mpeg2) gives me in high motion scenes. My Mpeg4v2 encodes aren't doing so well. Too much noise is being added during actual compression regardless of bitrate.

I have got an unsatisfactory but reasonable encode of the best music video ever.

Dropped by Anime Jyanai for the first time since they moved and I was quite surprised. Their anime on dvd rental selection was massive and had good dvds. They're also much closer to my place than before which will make for some interesting times.

I went by to pick up two brilliant green dvds from Jpophelp next door. One of the owners rented it out of his personal collection which is a pretty trusting move. Small, but cool store, nice people, and good prices on their anime (HK releases).

Japanese angel girls rule.

I picked up my electric guitar for the first time in many many months today. Started learning some buriguri songs. I'm pretty rusty, but it was nice to play again.

Cuteness defined: Japanese girls in angel outfits. More details to come.

Ok, so i said Visitor Q was the most crazy, but I was wrong. Miike's Ichi the Killer was salted and shelled.

Among various scenes of violence against women, were scenes involving torture and self mutilation to the extent of one character graphically cutting off the front chunk of his tongue with a tanto.

Not only did I flinch, but I was squirming in my seat and biting my fist. As with most of the Miike films I've seen, the plot wasn't terribly strong, but the directing and humor makes for an incredible film to watch.

Miike Takashi is definitely one to watch for as his three films I saw this year were all ones to remember.

Another night, another two film fest movies. Despite my hopes, Nabi was a better movie than Teenage hooker became killing machine in daehakno.

Nabi was a much more serious movie than the others I went to this year, and really was one of the best. Great acting, great looking (despite being shot with dv), and very interesting. Actress Kim Ho-Jung also reminded me of a girl I had a crush on in college. A great acting job by the three stars, and a sad, thought provoking tale made it a great film to see.

Teenage hooker wasn't as funny or crazy as I was hoping. Visitor Q currently takes top place in that category. Miike Takashi just makes good movies. Good thing my last film fest movie is Miike's "Ichi the Killer" tomorrow at the ridge.

Visitor Q indeed was better by far than Zipper and Tits. It featured the funniest necrophilia scene I've ever seen.

The movie was mostly nuts, but very funny. Some slow moments, and it wasn't shot in film which was a disappointment but overall a fun film.

The biggie, 'Teenage hooker became killing machine in Daehakno' is tomorrow. Preceded by much less insane 'Nabi the butterfly'.

You might also have noticed the modified layout. More daily posts per view now, and less orange.

Saw 'Zipper and tits' today, which was about a male and a female prostitute in two separate stories.

It turned out to be one of the most boring movies I've (or vic) has ever seen.

People were walking out pretty early, and the stream continued throughout the movie. There was minimal dialogue and way too many after effects filters, and the pace was rotting corpse in the artic slow.

I'm glad tomorrow we're seeing Miike's Visitor Q which is supposed to be insane.

Thanks to shaun, I started listening to a japanese band called the brilliant green. Really cool pop rock if you can deal with mixed japanese/english vocals.

Advice from Hyedie has me trying to fit a trip to Yaohan in this weekend to find some tbg cds between 4 Viff movies, trying to replace my busted airwalks, and finding a flannel duvet cover.

I don't know why some people think I'm a pervert.

That's just silly.

One of my favourite news sites is mainichi: wai wai. It features the nuts-est shit coming out of japan, like catfights and dirty panties.

Nothing like a weekly dose of crazy.

Creative Labs is run by a bunch of assholes.

Why else would a company who has a majority share in the PC soundcard market stop updating their shite drivers for the pci128?. My card dishes out the rice krispies in Win2k and Creative still sells this card to unsuspecting buyers.

Creative Labs = Bastard fucks.