Radified News for June, 2001

30jun2001 - Posted a Binaries page. Not many files included yet, but it's a start. Previously they were linked from different places scattered all over the site. On the new Binaries page, I included a new version of Motherboard Monitor (v5.08), as Alex's site seems to be down today. Binaries posted here.

Wendy posted a 5-min video, titled Nature Calls. This is a project she did with classmates (Ringo, Manuel & Sabrina) for a summer class titled Visual Expression (USC Film school). See here.

Wendy wanted a YaBB bulletin board for her site, too. I set her up today. See here. Two boards in two days. I'm getting good at setting up bulletin boards.

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29jun2001 - Set up YaBB bulletin board today. YaBB stands for Yet another Bulletin Board. It's an open source (free) bbs. Only took a couple of hours to install & configure. I thought it would've took much longer. I've wanted to learn how to set-up a bulletin board for a long time. Fun stuff. See here

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28jun2001 - Posted Film school update #10, titled 508 Answer-print Screening. See here

Wendy's final day of classes today for a summer class, titled Visual Expression. This is the class she's been taking all the photos for - a mandatory class. 

She and a team of 2 other students made a short film for the class. She'll be posting it at her
site soon, after making some small adjustments. She was impressed with the quality of all the films made by students in this class with her.

We've been reading the books mentioned in the 23jun update, listed below. The book listed first, The Writer's Jounrney, is (by far) best of the four. Surprisingly, the book listed as #4, the one by Joseph Campbell, is the worst, or at least written the poorest - even tho the other three books are based on it. 

We heard that audio tapes are the best way to digest Campbell's The Hero's Journey

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27jun2001 - I've finally gotten around to playing with the site's Web Usage Statistics. There is so much info available, it's almost overwhelming. 

Seems the Ghost guide is consistently the #1 draw. Interesting, cuz it's my first ever Radified guide. I know that if you type Norton Ghost user's guide in Google, and hit the I'm Feeling Lucky button, you'll get my guide. 

The CUSL2 guide and the rip & encode guide usually vie for the second most accessed pages. In the last few days, Lani's photos have sky-rocketed to the top of the charts. 

The Benchmarks page is the most inconsistent. Some days it's at or near the top, while on others, it far down the list. For more about which articles are most popular with readers, see here.

It's also surprising to see which sites are referring Radified. For example, I had no idea that Alex's site, which makes the killer little app, Motherboard Monitor (currently at v5.07), refers me from this page. Notice where he says, 

If, after you read this, you feel you need to do something about your CPU temperature, why not check out many of the newsgroups, or do give Radified a try. =D

Here is another reference from a support forum at a site named helpfromtechs, that I never knew existed. Sounds like they like my Ghost guide. See here. I get readers from Monkey's Audio daily. A lot of readers also drop in from SatCP's site. 

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26jun2001 - Posted Film school update #9, titled Application for 546 Directorship. Only four more to go for the semester. See here.

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25jun2001 - Posted an article on the subject of Partitioning, specifically on the advantages that hard drives containing multiple partitions hold over those with only a single partition, and other partitioning strategies. See here.

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24jun2001 - Wendy took some more photos of Miss Lani for her Visual Expression class, this time at Naguochi Gardens, in Costa Mesa. She got a bunch of great shots. Here is a sampling of10 photos to give you an idea of how they came out.

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23jun2001 - Posted Film school update #8, titled Workprint Screening. See here. Only 5 more to go, and I'll be all caught up. 

Wendy picked up her summer reading books today. She's been working on the script for her thesis project, even tho she won't begin shooting it for another year. She wants it to rock, so she's getting an early start. The four books she'll use as the basis for her story structure are:

1. The Writer's Journey - Mythic structure for writers (Vogler)
2. Stealing Fire from the Gods - A dynamic model for writers & filmmakers (
Bonnet)
3. Myth & the Movies - Discovering the mythic structure of 50 unforgettable films (
Voytilla)
4. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (
Campbell).  

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22jun2001 - Wendy is taking a (graduate-level) class at USC Film school, called Visual Expression. It requires her to take photos in ways that illustrate she understands various concepts relating to hue, tone, color, etc. Posted scans of 10 photos here, mostly of Lani.

Surf the web anonymously using Anonymizer. Then sign up for (free) secure email at Ziplip (click the red Register Now!). Check out a cool program called Neotrace here.

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21jun2001 - Posted Film school update #7, titled, Editors' Cut Shown. See here. Over half of the updates from last semester are now posted (7 out of 13). The Index page for the updates is here.

Today is the summer solstice, the first day of summer (in the northern hemisphere, anyway). The days begin to get shorter starting today. Get out and spend some time in the sun today. Do something special to celebrate the longest day of the year.

Check out AltaVista's language translator, here. Simply enter the text you wish to translate, select the appropriate language from/to from the dropdown menu, and hit the Translate button. Your translated message will appear above the text box. Try translating this one (French):

Ce traducteur de langage est très bon! Il y a maintenant aucun langage que vous ne pouvez facilement traduire.

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20jun2001 - Jahmar won two first-place awards in a local high school art competition for photos he took. One is of HalfDome (67kb) and the other is of the Tuolomne river (121kb), both were taken in Yosemite, and both are black & white. See here

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19jun2001 - Posted Film school update #6, titled Editors' Cut. See here

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18jun2001 - Updated the rip/encode guide. I never thought it would get this big. It must be cuz I'm learning more about ripping & encoding. 

Went to the beach yesterday. Didn't stay long. I am burnt today, lobsterized. Hot-pink. Everything hurts, even the tops of my feet. Hurts to wear shoes. 

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17jun2001 - Posted Film school update #5, titled, Making an Unconventional Film. See here.

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16jun2001 - How 'bout them Lakers? Two years in a row. Shaq MVP. I would've liked to see it go one more game.

Jan sent a joke. Like most people, I get a lot of these. Most suck. Not sure why I liked this one. Must be my warped sense of humor. See here.

Posted Film school update #4, titled First Primary Shoot. See here.

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15jun2001 - Posted Film school update #3, titled Stress Returns, See here.

A new MP3 format called MP3Pro has been released, promising equivalent audio quality at lower bit-rates. Download the MP3Pro player/encoder here. Official release notice here. The only problem is that the files are limited to 64kbps, which represents sucky quality.

Most people aren't willing to sacrifice quality to save size. Rather, they're interested in maximizing quality first, then minimizing file size at that sonic quality. This new encoder doesn't even give you the option of selecting higher bit-rates. Until then, who cares about 64kbps? 

I currently encode my MP3s at 256kbps (guide to ripping & encoding posted here).  Now that you can buy a 60-gig hard drive for as little as $189, people are encoding at higher bit-rates, not lower. And if you haven't noticed, hard drives keep getting bigger and cheaper, all the time. 

Which explains the surge in popularity of loss-less compression formats such as Monkey's Audio, which offer a *perfect* digital copy of the original music. Zero loss. You can fit a lot of loss-less songs on a 60-gig drive, maybe 200 CD's worth. 

CDs are still the most popular listening format. Every home has a CD player, and most every automobile. People I know rip their CDs to their hard drives and encode songs as either high-quality MP3s, or loss-less files (with Monkey's or Shorten). When they want new music, they simply burn a compilation CD of the songs they feel like listening to at the time. Takes 5 minutes.

I store all my favorite songs as loss-less .ape files with Monkey's. Everything else gets stored as a 256kbps MP3, using the LAME encoder. Everything is ripped with EAC's secure method. Life is good.

I played with the new MP3Pro encoder. Audio quality stinks. So I don't see people rushing to this new format anytime soon. Give me transparency at 128kbps, and I'll be interested. I'm not very interested in squeezing bits if it means sacrificing quality. CNET news coverage here. ZDNet here

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14jun2001 - Posted Film school update #2, titled 546 Screening. See here

For those wanting to set up a powerful, free FTP server, I found a great tutorial for WarFTP here. The only downside to WarFTP is that it's more complicated than the pay versions, like FTP Serv-U and LeapFTP, and Bulletproof. This tutorial makes set-up a snap. 

The files to download are here. Download both v1.71beta2 and v1.80.5.0. Install 1.71beta2 first, then extract v1.80.5.0 and overwrite the file war-ftpd.exe installed from v1.71beta2 in the war-ftpd directory in your Program Files. Then follow the tutorial. There's more help here, if needed. General info on FTP servers here. WarFTP home here.

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13jun2001 - Posted an ASPI guide. See here. Also posted Film school update #1, titled, Welcome to the 546 semester. See here.

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12jun2001 - I started working on posting Film school updates from last semester (spring), colloquially referred to at '546', where 11 students team up to produce a 12-min, 16mm color film, with sync-sound dialogue. I have a 14 updates. Will try to post the first tomorrow.

Updates from the 546 semester will be much easier to post, cuz a few weeks into the semester, I changed from an email-based format, to web-based updates, where I simply sent the link to a page containing the update. 

I don't know why I didn't think of that sooner. It's much easier, allows me to add links easier, and allows me to go back & correct errors. Whereas, once the email is sent, it's gone.

So the first 4 or 5 updates will involve converting emails to web pages, but after that, the remainder will be easy to post, cuz they're already done. So far, I simply created the format for the index page.

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11jun2001 - Timothy McVeigh is dead. He was pronounced dead at 7:14AM local time (Indiana). He had no last words, but rather gave the warden a hand-written poem, copied word-for-word from the poem titled Invictus, written by William Ernest Henley, in 1875. The poem, about being strong in the face of suffering, is here

He is the first person executed by the US government since 1963. An essay he wrote is here. What's so surprising is that he's a decorated US Army veteran. A model soldier. He blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City because he was outraged by what the government did in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas.

Notice that the date of the Oklahoma City bombing & the tragedy at Waco at the same (19april). McVeigh was greatly influenced by the book The Turner Diaries.  

Death came by lethal injection. They shot 3 chemicals into his right leg. The first put him to sleep, the second stopped his breathing. The third stopped his heart. More info here.

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10jun2001 - Published Film school update #16, titled Grades. This is the final update of the 508 semester. See here. Time to fire up a cigar of accomplishment. The 546 semester is next, which is every bit as interesting as the 508 semester, if not more so.

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09jun2001 - Swordfish was disappointing. There were good parts, and it might even be worth seeing, but it's not going on my Recommended list. 

The story needed more development, or something. If it wasn't for Travolta, the movie woulda been lame. Nevertheless, the theater was packed, and no one walked out early. It wasn't terrible, just not what I was hoping for. 

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08jun2001 - Updated the Rip/encode guide with reader input. It's getting fat. Still only one page, but past the point where I should bust it into two. Never thought it would've grown this large.

That's been the routine for most of my guides. They start with one quick page, I get reader feedback, then they grow into a fat page, more reader feedback, then they grow to two, then three ... the SCSI guide is now at 14 pages, my fattest.

I'm looking forward to finishing the Film school updates for the 508 semester. One more to go, before I get to smoke my cigar of accomplishment. Maybe tomorrow. Then on to 546 semester updates.

Swordfish comes out today. I saw previews on TV. They looked good, but all previews look good. 

Sign up for free, anonymous email at ziplip here, so you don't wind up on those mailing lists you can't get off of. Click the red Register Now! button.

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07jun2001 - Updated the Programs guide. This turned out to be a lot more work than I bargained for. And I don't know why so many web masters have to keep changing their dang links, which means this page requires more maintenance than most.

Posted Wendy's Film school update #15, titled, Wrapping up the Semester. This was the week that almost killed her. See here. Only one more update to go for the semester.

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06jun2001 - I appreciate all the notes of congrats on our 1-year anniversary. Was surprised to find that family & friends enjoy the site's techie stuff, and that fellow techies enjoy the personal parts, especially Wendy's Film school updates. The next one should be posted in a day or two. Then I'll move onto the 546 (Spring) semester updates. 

Updated the About page. The site's 1-year anniversary seemed like a good time.

Swordfish will be out Friday. I hope it's good (storyline here). I may have to don my Linuxnewbie t-shirt and catch the early show. We need a good hacker/geek movie. Paul Oakenfold is doing the Soundtrack, so it should rock. 

I like Travolta. The Dog ran into him in sauna in Hollywood last year. He said, "He's a big guy." Swordfish is produced by the same guy who produced The Matrix. Speaking of hacking, there's an interesting read here.

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05jun2001 - Radified celebrates it's 1-year anniversary today, amid much festive celebration. You can read about the day we went critical, at the bottom of the page here

In a year that saw many major web sites falter & fail, we've grown bigger than ever. Clearing the big trees makes room for the smaller seedlings to grow. 

The site is growing by roughly 20% a month. A special shout out to all who've contributed this past year, and helped make Radified the site it is. You know who you are. I'm even more excited about the second year. 

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04jun2001 - Posted Film school update #14, titled Editor's Position Accepted. Almost done with the semester. Only two more to go. See here.

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03jun2001 - Radified will be 1 year old in two more days. Lavish festivities are planned. To help celebrate the occasion, I'd like to post a new & improved image for the Radified logo, the one at the top of the page. 

Since my Photoshop skills are limited (suck), I have a 128MB stick of Mushkin Budget PC133 to offer as a reward. It's not the world's best RAM, but will run fine at 133MHz (3-3-3). If you have digital, artistic skills, and can make a new logo for me, I'll send you the RAM if I use your design. I also give you/your site full credit.

The color scheme should compliment the logo. I can make new-colored heading titles, if necessary. I can also change colors of the side panels if necessary. The background stays black (it's easy on the eyes).

The current logo jpeg is 9K. The new one shouldn't be more than 25 (<20 is better). I'd like to incorporate a radiation tri-blade into the logo somewhere .. maybe a small one in the center of the first letter 'd'. Look at the image I made at the bottom of this page, for an example of a radiation tri-blade.

I'm into tasteful, understated, clever, designs. Not gaudy or flashy. The current dimensions seems about right. A little bigger or smaller might work, too. Send 'em here. (I know, I should've posted this 2 weeks ago.) 

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02jun2001 - We saw Moulin Rouge last night, at the Lido. The Lido is the last of a dying breed of theaters, being squeezed out of existence by the big multiplex chains. It even has an upstairs balcony.

The 7:30 show was sold out, so we had to entertain ourselves in Newport Beach until the late show began at 10:15.

Wendy has been wanting to see this movie forever. It's been playing up in LA for a couple of weeks now. While walking to the late show (after sushi & sake at Buddha's Favorite on the waterfront of the canal), a little old lady, bent over, said, "Save your money. It's lousy." =D

M-R is about love, and the ability of song to express love, in a way only songs can. The movie uses popular love songs of the last few decades to tell its story, as if paying homage to the love song. 

The only part of the movie I didn't like was Madonna's, Like a Virgin. That's when two people down front got up and walked out. 

The movie is touted as a "new thing". You get into the story surprisingly fast (which I liked), and it moves along quickly (which I also liked). I'm putting it on my official recommended list. I have a feeling it's a movie people will either love or hate, cuz it all about the feeling of love. Wendy wants to see it again.

We also saw Shrek & A Knight's Tale, a few days ago (snuck into the Tale after Shrek was over). I enjoyed both, tho not enough to put them on the official Radified approved list. Wendy cried at both these movies & liked them both better than Pearl Harbor .. for what it's worth.

I'm looking fwd to Swordfish, which will be out next week. Movie's like that make me wanna learn how to become a hacker.

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01jun2001 - The first installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy is scheduled to be released in theaters at Christmas. Amazon.com sponsored a poll recently, and LOTR was voted most-beloved-book-of-the-last-1000-years.

Everybody I talked to suggested reading the book before the movie comes out. I have the 3-in-1 book set, along with The Hobbit (Mr. Bilbo Baggins). We've been reading a chapter a night before bed. It's easy to see why everybody loves it. 

Our amigo (Brian) is editing trailers for the LOTR.net site. I'm trying to get him to feed me juicy inside info, but he said he had to sign an NDA, and would get in trouble. 

Wendy worked as an Asst Director yesterday, on Tania's thesis film project, Sea Horses. She was nervous, cuz it was her first time at the position. An AD is like an on-set cop, keeping everybody on schedule. The AD says, "Ready on the set, lights, roll sound, roll camera." Then the director says, "Action." 

She was a natural. Nobody believed it was her first time as an AD. They shot at an aquarium near Long Beach harbor. She says Sea Horses are the only creatures with males bearing the children. True?

She's gonna edit the film, and only stood in for the regular AD, who couldn't make it yesterday. She'll be editing the project with Final Cut Pro. So in addition to Adobe Premiere & Avid Media Composer, which she already knows rather well, it looks like she's gonna learn FCP too. 

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Linkage to -> News for July, 2001

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