Notepad, worklog, tasks, etc.

We bought a house on June 26, 2009. Did the move on the weekend of June 27, 28. I like the small south facing gardening space in the backyard. This always reminds me of the farmer days in my childhood, when my father and mother made their living on a small land, growing cotton in the summer and wheat in the winter.

June 28: planted 8 tomatos from Chi Shuang.

June 30: planted 4 more tomatos from Chi Shuang, a line of 14 garllics, one purple flower that we grew from seeds (I forgot name).

June 30: introduced myself to Julia across the street. Carol visited us with a card a flower pot. Helen and Joy visited us with a pot of rose. Refrigerator arrived in the morning. Spent a lot of time cleaning tap residues inside it (damn GE for not using better quality tap). Caulked most of the 90-degrees. Oiled the garage door. Padded two chairs and the dinning table. Finally we can sit while eating!  

Very rough cmd line and I do not know the right output file extension, but the output can be played by mplayer, which is all I need

mencoder dvd://3 -alang en -dev-device e: -o c:\dvd\3.avi -oac faac -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=1200

- 红薯叫什么？
- Sweet potato
- 应该叫Red potato呀。

- 狼的英文是什么？
- Wolf.
- 那Sugar wolf是什么？
- 糖狼.
(原来桌上有一只玩具螳螂…)

I am able to put an old 45min *.rm video file to my Zune 80GB, using encode-handheld-2.5.pl + a version of ffmpeg that supports x264 video and aac audio.

Building ffmpeg:

svn checkout svn://svn.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg
cd ffmpeg
./configure --enable-libfaac --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl
make

Converting:

./encode-handheld.pl -t ipod -f input-file -n new-title-for-the-video-file-to-show-in-zune-ui

for i in `find -iname '*.jpg' -printf '%f\n'`; do echo $i; gm convert -resize 50% $i small-$i; rm $i; done

Need more work to let it process photo inside folders.

This morning I went to Juanita park and saw some bass, but no luck having any bite from them.

Searched the web and still earthworm seems the best friend … here is some tips on how to raise them from the web (http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/natbltn/001-099/nb070.htm)

“You can keep your own earthworms, too. The smaller species are better
than the big night crawlers. Use a wash tub or large box with a few
screened holes in the bottom for drainage. Place it in your basement or
a cool shady place and fill it with 3 parts of good black soil mixed with
1 part of decaying leaves or grass clippings. Twice a month mix into the
top layer 4 cups of oatmeal, some fatty meat scraps and some meat
bones or cracked chicken bones. Keep the soil moist but not saturated.
If the worms come to the top it is too wet and they are in danger of
drowning.

“On a long trip, worms can be transported in a box of moist earth or in
sphagnum moss obtained from a florists’s greenhouse. The earth is
better too dry than too wet. Do not use sand. Worms eat their way
through soil. Sand scratches their insides and kills them. A dead worm
is no good for bait.”

Lele ran to the wall to join in his team, but his coach leaded him in front of me and asked to take Lele home. I smiled to the coach and said ok.  When I turned to Lele, my eyes were in tears. I said something to Lele in order to let me calm. Finally I could say goodbye to another mother.

Lele has soccer ball class every Friday morning. Every time he is reluctant to  go to the class. This morning he told me he was not interested in the soccer ball. I told him not to waste money and to be nice to his classmates. Then we hurrily headed to the class.

Fredo hit his classmates twice. One was happened when they were walking backward. He came up against a short boy. He stoke the boy on the head and shoulders several times. His coach stopped him and asked him to say  sorry. The other one was happened when they were kicking the soccer ball to his coach. Lele ran around instead of kicking the ball. Lele ran to Harrison who is his classmate in the last session and began to beat Harrison on the head, face, and shoulders. The coach stopped him before I got there. My heart was twisting not only because Lele hurt his friend again but also I felt the feeling of  Harrison’s mother. The coach told Lele to go home. After talking with Lele and getting a promise from him, I let him join his team again. Not until he got there, the coach leaded him to me.

Finally Lele got a punishment for his hitting. When I stepped to the car, I thought it over if this is the result I force Lele to play the soccer ball. Anyway, he doesn’t show any interested in playing soccer ball. I shouldn’t push him and give him a chance to hurt other children. We decided to quit the soccer ball.

When I played any video in Windows Medis Player,  I had sound but no picture. I searched the Internet and knew many people met the same problem. The common solutions include installing a codec software, re-installing Windows Media Player, using other powerful media player softwares,  uninstalling all other media player, and so on.  I tried most of them except installing a more powerful media player (because I found the real solution when I downloaded the software).

The solution for this problem is to change the video acceleration setting.

1. Open Windows Media Player -> Tools -> Options  -> Performance;

2. Change the video acceleration setting to None;

3.  Click Ok and restart Windows Media Player.

Weekly Petroleum Status Report  Release Schedule: Wednesday after 10:35 a.m. EST (for tables 1 and 11-17 in txt, csv, and xls formats) and after 1:00 p.m. EST (for pdf files and appendix C) (schedule)

Also This Week in Petroleum Release Schedule: Wednesday @ 1:00 p.m. EST

1) APE to WAV: http://supermmx.org/linux/mac/ (seems not included in most distributions, need to compile by yourself): mac cd.ape cd.wav -d
2) WAV to MP3: lame –preset standard cd.wav cd.mp3

3) Split: mp3splt -f -c cd.cue -o “@n” cd.mp3

4) Tag: mp3info -a artist -l album 01.mp3