Mobile Internet has grown bigger than ever lately, and for the first time since the dawn of humankind there are now more mobile subscriptions than there are stationary ones here in Sweden. I don't like it at all.

For starters, it's not healthy. Sweden already has a MRL about 500 times higher than the allowed level in for example Spain. We are first in the world with 4G, we have more mobile masts than there are in all American states, but it's not something I'm proud of. Reports on cancerous side effects and other health problems caused by such radiation remains in shadow, the big multinational mobile conglomerates pave the way, they control the future. Everybody wants to go mobile, everyone but me it seems.

For those who don't care about expanding tumors in the nether regions of their brains, another downside to mobile broadband is security. Keeping your connection secure isn't easy, neighbors can steal your bandwidth and if they're educated enough they can hack into your system easily. The mobility allows for access through all and any nearby sources. Recently mobile phones, especially ones mimicking modern computers with all functions they retain, have started getting hacked.

Freedom, where is it? How can you be free if you can be reached dependless of current location? There's a socializing conflict out there; we are diving deep into social media and still trying to maintain traditional methods of communication on the side. I'd say it's at the brink of social overload, we don't need this. Twitter is good for marketing, it's good for posting updates, it's not good for personal communication. Facebook is a digitalized address-book, keep it that way. I don't care for checking email on a cellphone, I keep one in case of an SOS only, why have a computer if you don't use it? Why not start calling through your computer instead? Throw your cell away and be out of your cell today.

That's my thirty-five cents.

Have a hellish one. >:D

I have a reseller account with space left over and I'd like to make good use of it, thus I'm giving away free accounts all day today, today only. It's a Halloween special. ;)

The Halloween hosting package comes packed with cPanel, FTP, mySQL, awStats, email ... & a ton of things you don't need (or need to know about). All features are without limits (IOW you can have 457883 mySQL databases if you like, as long as it doesn't eat up all your space).

What you do need (or want) to know is that you get 500MB space and unmetered bandwidth. Unmetered does not mean unlimited, it just means we don't monitor your bandwidth, if it goes above 5806TB per decade we will probably have to shut you down (do the math), but we don't think that will ever happen, so we're not putting a cap on your bandwidth usage. If you start getting a ton of traffic, we'll warn you beforehand, we will NEVER shut down your site without warning if this is the reason for its shutting down! Why am I saying we btw? It's not like there's more than me involved in this web-hosting venture, lmao.

You can host as many addon domains, subdomains, forwarders, etc as you like and use either your own domain (I can register a top-level domain for you if you don't have one) or a subdomain (name.1tb.be). I allow adult material and linking to nulled scripts, warez, etc on this server. It's not the same server as this website is hosted on. Note that I do NOT allow you to host these nulled scripts, Warez, etc yourself! Adult material is fine on the server, as long as it's legal. No child porn or anything like that, no malicious scripts either, nothing directly illegal.

Questions? Post them quickly, the day will be over in ehh ... a day. If you want an account contact me with the following details and you'll get your account info shortly.


Name:
Email:
Domain?:
Subdomain?:


If you want me to register the domain it'll cost $10/year. I'll register the domain after payment has been made, but more info on payment will be sent to you by email. I think that's about everything, now have a Happy Halloween!

Anime fansubbers have been using the MKV container format for a long time, but everyone else has been catching on slowly it seems. Here's a post about it and what I've learned so far, in the past three days. First off, since it is a container format and not a codec there isn't a big difference in terms of performance, but there are a few great things about MKV that AVI can't really compete with. Off the top of my head:

• Softcoding

You can softcode subs, in other words include subtitle files that can be enabled or disabled through the media player. The subs can also be styled using (enter media player of choice here)s subtitle interface; you can change the font, the size, the position & so much more. The alternative is hardcoded subs, which are a pain in the butt hole as they can't be turned off or styled at all, if you don't want subs, they'll really be in the way sometimes. You've probably seen lots of old movies with hardcoded subs in all white, usually using a way to small size, often in a hard-to-read font, sometimes completely unreadable on bright backgrounds. Softcoded subtitles FTW!

• Multiple Streams

You can include multiple audio or/and video streams, easily enabled or disabled through your media player.

• Playback Recovery

It can recover playback even when the stream is damaged, don't know what that means exactly, but it must be good.

• Only Good Stuff

It's streamable, supports metadata, chapters & fast seeking within the file.

• Open For More!

It's coded for the future, for all platforms, with an open and free media framework (rephrased from their website).

So, you can for example re-encode a DVD and include all the alternative audio streams and subtitles. You can even include menus if you like, and link to the different chapters ... though that's a bit unnecessary in my humble view of the world.

What does MKV stand for? Matroska Video. There's a MKA format as well, but it's not of much use IMHO, when it comes to audio there are so many much better container formats to chose from. I use MP3 as it is still a good standard out there, but OGG & FLAC are great alternatives with much better compression/quality aspects.

Anyhow, back to MKV. I'm re-encoding my entire digital movie collection from AVI/XviD to MKV/H246 right now. Some of it is already using this modern standard, but 99% of it uses the old outdated XVid, some even DivX. I thought it was time for a change, so I'm changing, mostly because my disc space is running out. I plan on reducing the quality a little while I'm at it to save some space, and since H264 has a much better compression ratio I estimate I'll be freeing up about 300GB space in the process, about a third for each file without losing too much quality in the process.

I'm using Ripbot to re-encode all videos from (mostly) AVI to MKV, some straight from the source (DVD or BRay), and it works great. I tried finding some guide for best settings if you want to balance small file size and good quality, but I haven't found one yet, though it seems that the standard settings are working fine. You just need to enter a video source and hit go.

It's easy to add extra subtitles or audio/video streams as well, so I'm adding English subtitles to all movies while I'm at it. This I do with a separate program though, MKVToolnix, a great set of tools for working with MKV files, you can add a subtitle file within seconds (a process called Muxing), or, if you want to remove subtitle files and edit them, you can do that too. It also lets you see some info about MKV files (bitrate for example) that you can't yet view through the default Windows Explorer.

The re-encoding is prettty heavy, and takes up a lot of processor power. It's also taking a lot of time and I really don't have that much time right now, but wth, no use waiting. I thought about letting the process run overnight and shutdown by itself, but if I leave the computer on it feels like I can't really turn off either. :)

Hope I chose the right standard to go with, right now it doesn't seem like there's anything better out there, but who knows,a new alternative might pop up and replace this one at any moment. Of course I'd love being able to compress files without losing quality even further, but it wait a while, for now I'd like to rejoice over the sudden decrease in used up space.

... and I still don't know what to dress up as!

I haven't bought a costume, made a costume, hell I don't even have a complete costume that fits me anymore.

Last year I dressed up as a pirate, and I'll probably do the same this year if no suit magically soars down from the sky. It's the best choice since I do have some fitting attire, a skull bandanna, an eye patch, Hawaii shorts ... I even have a plastic sword. Though I won't be bringing my plastic sword. Not the plastic dagger either.

The choice of not dressing up at all does exist, but it's fun dressing up as something else. In a sense it lets you be yourself, bring out a part that you can't display on regular occasion, a savage side of being. Or am I just speaking for myself?

Thought about going as a Ninja, but that would require some planning ahead. Sure I have the Ninja stars, Katana, Scythes, Knifes & bundles of Shurikens ... only problem is that they're a hundred miles away. Literally. They're at the summer place.

Anyhow, have to shape up before the grand event so I'm going to bed early, 23. Been tired the past week, pushing myself past suitable limits of computer time. No good I know, but WTH, you only live once right? ;)

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