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I spent a couple of hours getting a proprietary software H.264 codec working in Linux and even published a writeup to help others. A day later I learned from one of the people I sourced in my article that nVidia started releasing Linux drivers last November for the hardware high definition decoders found on the 8xxx series of video cards as well as a customized version of mplayer to support the new drivers.

A mixture of emotions came across as I realized I wasted an entire day on a software decoder when a hardware solution was available for $30 to $40. The software solution was fairly disappointing, so I decided to try one of these new cards, an nVidia GeForce 8500 GT, to see if it provided a better solution. It took some work with my setup, but the results were worth it.

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I’ve got an old Pentium D 920. Over two years old, with the right ffmpeg options for mplayer and frame dropping enabled, this CPU can still play H.264 720p video at amazing quality in Linux. However, all 1080p and 1080i60 (camcorder M2TS files) choke horribly. The video drags, audio skips and the video is totally unwatchable. In my search for a better video codec, I came across CoreAVC, a closed source commercial codec for Windows, as well as the coreavc-for-linux project: an attempt to use those closed source drivers with various media players in Linux.

Unfortunately, the installation documents for coreavc-for-linux were months old, out-of-date and had few corrections for new bugs. The following are some of the common errors I found as well as the solutions I’ve found to get the trail version of the CoreAVC codec working on my Gentoo Linux system.

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There has been considerable media attention given to the amazing job of Captain Sullenberger in his ability to safely land a US Airways Airbus A320 into the Hudson River in New Your City. The response of the New York ferry service and emergency response crew insured that there were no fatalities with the only major injuries involving hypothermia. Still the media coverage of this events seems to have overshadowed the still ongoing bloody conflict in Gaza, and ever further, the nomination herrings of Eric Holder for the position of attorney general.

During his confirmation hearing, Holder unequivocally held that the interrogation technique of “waterboarding” is illegal. Furthermore, Holder refused to accept the premise that torture could be acceptable if there is an impending attack (known as the “Ticking Time Bomb” scenario). Holder is also against the policy of “rendition,” the practice of handing detainees over to countries where they could be subject to torture.

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My MacBook is about two and a half years old. Aside from upgrading the memory to 2GB when I initially purchased it, I’ve kept it stock and it’s been a fairly reliable laptop and the most convenient laptop I’ve owned. Currently it’s also the only computer I own that will let me edit and play HD content. Even then, the video becomes jumpy after about fifteen to twenty seconds during the editing process. Also, the battery no longer holds enough power to keep the laptop operational for over an hour. So a few weeks back I decided some upgrades were in order: upgrading to OS X 10.5, a new 500GB hard drive and new battery.

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Recently I migrated several websites from various web applications and frameworks onto a common WordPress base. I chose WordPress because it has a large adoption audience, a massive range of plug-ins and a good release cycle. I decided to use WordPressMu (multi-user) to handle several websites from one base install. I ran into a couple of interesting caveats and unique gotchas I’ve decided to document here in hopes of assisting other WordPressMu administrators.

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