So this weekend was pretty boring. I finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade my system to the newest version of Microsoft’s operating system Windows 7. So far i like it. I’ve been using Windows Vista since it arrived a few years back. I never really had any problems with it. Being in the IT field, i felt obligated to use it as i wanted to be able to easily diagnose and fix problems that arose within the OS. The same is true for this OS. I want to make sure i understand how to use it and know where things are. Microsoft has a bad habit of re-labeling all of their programs and controls every time they release an OS. They also like to rearrange stuff so that you have no idea where anything is. They are a lot like Supermarkets. One week the cereal is on isle 3. The next week they’ve moved cereal to isle 9. Its a constant battle to find the products you need and use all the time.

So other than the whole rearrangement of icons, names, and features Windows 7 is basically Windows Vista with a new task bar, start menu, and a few interface changes. I do like some of the changes though. I love the new “libraries” feature. I’ve not had the time to play around with it much but it basically allows you to create a library of all your files (E.g. Videos or music) even though those files may sit in various locations throughout your hard drives or external devices. Another feature i like is the new start menu. Microsoft has basically turned the task bar and start menu into the Mac OSX doc. Each running application now appears as an icon. You can pin programs to the task bar just as you can in OSX. You an hover your mouse over that icon to get a preview and name of the application. Windows are grouped under each programs icon. I like it a lot.

This time, when i installed Windows 7 I decided to install the 64-bit version of the OS. Previously I’vebeen running 32-bit OSs. (Windows XP and then Windows Vista) I’ve never really felt the need to run the 64-bit version of the OS before. Recently I’ve heard a lot about improvements to the compatibility of 64-bit apps as well as improvements Microsoft has made when dealing with 64-bit and 32-bit apps on the same machine. After much debate i finally decided that i would run the 64-bit version simply because i wanted to keep up with the technology. I also plan to add more ram to my system and you definitely need a 64-bit system to do that.

I did the install on Saturday evening. All my data is on my second hard drive so i didn’t really have to backup anything other than various desktop files and application specific files. The install finished Saturday night and i got all of my drivers installed. Today i spent most of the day re-installing programs and games. I really don’t have that many applications i use. The list consists of MS Office, Video codecs / PS3 streaming apps, UTorrent, Pidgin (for IM chat), 7Zip, Adobe CS4, Dameon Tools, FileZilla, Nero 7, Ventrillo, World of Warcraft, and Champions. By far the most time consuming applications were World of Warcraft and Adobe CS4. Wow took a good 2 hours and Adobe CS4 took around 45 minutes.

The other big news of the weekend was my acceptance into the closed beta for Champions Online. I’ve been waiting for this game for a while now. I’m not really a huge comic book geek or anything but i love the idea around this game. I’ve played WoW and a few other MMOs before this one and i have high expectations for this game. I hope that it doesn’t die off like so many others before it.

I got to play pretty much all weekend. The servers aren’t up 24/7. They only bring them up periodically to do controlled testing. This weekend was a 3-day test. On Friday the game was pretty laggy due to a recent major patch and a new infusion of testers. Yesterday was much smoother and lag-free. Today was about the same. The character creator was by far the best part of the game so far. You can spend HOURS creating a completely unique character. Everything from color, shape, size, sex, species, outfit, accessories, armor, etc. Everything is completely customizable. I found it funny that one of the bugs right now is a 1 hour time-out that occurs during character creation. Apparently once you start creating a character you only have 1 hour to do it or it times out and you lose everything you worked on.

Other than a few minor bugs and the minor lag i experienced on Friday the game feels complete. Everything i experienced down to the quests, trainers, NPCs, abilities, powers, etc felt complete. The game is set for official release on September 1st. I think this will be one of the games I’m definitely going to purchase.

So i said I’d never do it. I said i hated Blackberry’s and would rather use two tin-cans tied together with a string. I ranted and raved about how terrible Blackberry’s were and how they were trash. Well i guess i changed my mind. I am now the proud owner of the new Blackberry Curve 8900. My previous phone, the AT&T Tilt, has been by my side for about a year and a half. It was a great phone to begin with. It was my first smart phone. It was the phone that showed me how much i rely on email and how great an actual qwerty keyboard is. Sadly though, the phone was not that great. It was slow as hell, had a tiny screen, and was the size of a portable ham radio. And although it had a 3MP camera in it, it took terrible pictures. I never was able to get a good picture out of that thing.  And so it was time to replace the ageing beast and replace it with a newer shinier phone.

When i started looking at my options,  i realized i had only about three or four phones to choose from. I’m on AT&T (so is my company) and that means i had to get a phone compatible with AT&T’s network. That left me with the following phones to choose from: The new version of my old phone called the HTC Touch Pro 2, the iPhone 3GS, the Blackberry Bold, and the Blackberry Curve 8900. Now at first i convinced myself that i wanted an iPhone. Then i realized that it was a touchscreen and that i hated my Tilt’s touch screen. I realized that the functions i use the most are done easier on other phones. While the iPhone is great, its not built around email. And it also didn’t help that my company does not pay for iPhones on their plan. So that ruled the iPhone out. The second choice was the HTC Touch Pro 2. And well, it was basically just a shinier version of my old phone with a better screen and body. While the inside of the phone changed a lot, the OS has not. And i really got tired of WinMo. The size of the phone was still a concern as was the touch screen. And to top that off the phone is not even available to the public yet. AT&T hasn’t even set a release date. So that ruled the Touch Pro 2 out.

That left me with only two of my options. The Blackberry Bold and the Blackberry Curve 8900. When i looked further into the phones i found that the two phones were very similar in their functions with a few but important differences. The 8900 was smaller but lacked 3G connectivity. The Bold had 3G but lacked a good camera. The Bold was also a bit larger and had a keyboard that didn’t much appeal to me. So in the end, after a long mental debate, i decided on the Blackberry Curve 8900. As for the whole hating Blackberry thing goes, i think the fact that RIM finally released a few phones that have nice screens brought me over to the dark side. The main thing that really bugged me about Blackberry’s was the terrible ugly interface and the terrible screens. The 8900 and Bold really improved the screen and the interface (or theme w/e). Another reason i decided to get a Blackberry was that i manage our company’s BES server and anytime i make changes or update it I have to call someone who actually has a blackberry and have them test everything. I was also clueless on how to actually operate a Blackberry. Hopefully this new phone will give me a better understanding of Blackberry’s and the BES in general.

Please note that i still think the BES is quite possibly the most idiotic waste of money I’ve ever laid eyes on. That’s not to say it doesn’t do exactly what it is supposed to do. I’m just saying that its a huge waste of money and quite frankly a huge design flaw. I see no reason what-so-ever why RIM can’t just design a phone that can connect directly to a mail server or exchange server like every other phone in the world. The whole BES solution seems like a huge rip off to me. But who am i to say that RIM is ripping us off.

Lastly, because i can, i took a few comparison pictures and videos of the Blackberry Curve 8900 against an Apple iPhone 3GS. (The 3GS is not mine) Obviously the video is going to be way better on the 3GS. But take a look at the 8900′s pics. I think you’ll be surprised. Btw, don’t ask about the items in the picture. I kind of just grabbed anything that was bright and colorful. And yes that is a purple stuffed dragon. His name is Emp…

Below is a video comparison. As i said before, the 8900 is no match for the iPhone 3GS. But i figured i’d do one anyway for those interested.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The first thing i did was download a program called VirtualDub. This is a free video capturing and processing utility. Its open source and has been around for a while. I’ve used it many times in the past for random tasks. Its always been able to just about anything i throw at it. The program works the best with avi files. I’m sure it can work with other containers but the FAQ states that it was designed specifically for avi’s.

The first step is to open your video file in VirtualDub. (File > Open Video File) The file i was trying to open received an error about the audio stream having a non-zero start however it opened just fine after clicking OK.

Open the file

Once you have the file open the second step is to determine how far off the audio is from the video. You also need to know if the audio is playing before the video or after the video. (I.E. the lips move then the audio plays… or the audio plays then the lips move) I found it easiest to find a scene with some dialog and watch it. I was able to determine the audio started before the video and that the audio was off by about 3 seconds.

Once you’ve figured this out the third step is to configure VirtualDub to offset the audio so that it plays correctly with the video. To do this you will need to set VirtualDub’s audio processing mode to Full Processing Mode (Audio > Full Processing Mode) and open the interleaving options. (Audio > Interleaving) 

Set to Full Processing Mode & open Interleaving Options

At the bottom of that box you will find a section titled “Audio Skew Correction.” This is where you will input your offset. The offset needs to be entered in Milliseconds. 1 second = 1000 milliseconds. Since the audio in my file was played 3 seconds to early i entered 3000. If your audio plays to late you will need to enter that as a negative number. (AKA -3000) When you have entered the proper offset, click OK and preview the file. (There is a play and stop button at the bottom. You can also click and scroll through the video using your mouse)

Set your Audio Skew Correction

When you’ve finally corrected the audio problem and everything looks and sounds good, simply save the file as a new avi. (File > Save as AVI) The video will then be re-encoded and a new file with the correct audio and video will be created.

I hope this helps if you are having the same issues I had. VirtualDub can do a lot more than what i wrote about here. It can even correct small temporary errors in videos. (Such as the video and audio being out of sync for only a portion of the video rather than the whole video) Now that you know the basics everything else should be quite simple.

Its been a long time since i had a chance to sit down and write  a new post. I’ve been really busy at work. We had two major events that seemed to take up all of June. Now that everything is over I don’t really know where the month went. So i guess I’ll do a quick recap of the events that happened during June.

The first even took place the second week of June called TRUE. TRUE stands for The Relocation and Upgrade Event. Last year it was called the Select-A-Seat event. It was basically the same thing as Select-A-Seat but not at the Ford Center. Due to construction at the Ford Center in preparation for the 2009 – 2010 season we had to move the event from the Ford Center to the Coca-Cola Center in Brick Town. This presented several technical problems to us as an organization. Firstly, its hard to sell a product when you can’t actually SEE or touch the product. In our case, we are selling seats. Last year when the team first moved here, we were able to bring customers into the Ford Center and show them around the arena. Customers were able to sit in their seats and get a feel of what those seats would be like during an actual game. Obviously we can’t do that when we don’t have access to the Ford Center. After a lot of back and forth we decided to go with a 3D model of the arena created by a company called Ballena using their Seats3D software. If you click here you can see the actual application they created for us.

The second problem we had to deal with was bringing the 3D model to life at a different venue a mile away from the Ford Center. Not only did we have to deal with the 3d model but we also had to relocate our entire sales & retention staff to the Coke Center for one week while the event was going on. What that translates to in IT terms is that we had to transport and setup about 35 computers and workstations from the office to the Coke Center. On top of that we also had to setup a bunch of computers and large plasma/LCD monitors as well as 3 large projection screens to show off the Seats3D chart of the arena. Many of the workstations we setup required two LCDs. And the icing on the cake was that the Coke Center had just a single DSL modem that provided Internet to the entire place. Obviously with 35+ PCs constantly downloading 3d data over the Internet the existing DSL connection would not work. We ended up having our own temporary Internet connection installed at the Coke Center for the event. The 45mb DS3 that was installed worked extremely well and we had no problems the entire week. We also had a VPN tunnel back to our main office for all of our POS and ticketing transactions. Over all the event was a huge success and went off without a single problem. (IT problems at least)

After wrapping up TRUE we had about 2 weeks to plan and prepare for the biggest event of the summer, the NBA 2009 Draft. Seeing as how the 2008 Draft occurred prior to the teams relocation, this was our first Draft in OKC. As this was my first experience with the Draft, there were a lot of unknowns. The Draft isn’t as complicated or technical as other events such as the TRUE event. However it does require much more work and planning. The main issue is that we have to absolutely ensure that everything works as it is intended to work. That means when the team’s GM, Sam Presti, picks up the official Draft telephone, he better get a dial tone. It means that when our head trainer needs to lookup a player’s medical chart in the medical database, the database has to work. It means that when our assistant GM needs to look up something on espn.com, the Internet has to work. All of those things add up to making sure every piece of technology in the war room and facility works and has sufficient backup plans in place to keep it working if something unexpected should happen.

After much planning, preparation, and testing the night of the draft arrived. For those unfamiliar with the Draft here is how it works. All thirty teams in the NBA are put in a specific order. (Some by chance and others by record) The Thunder, for example, were fortunate enough to be given the third pick. Each team was connected to the NBA’s headquarters via a webex conference and each team designated one telephone number through which the picks were to be verbally chosen. When it’s your team’s time to choose, the commissioner calls your team’s designated phone number and informs you that you have five minutes to make your selection. (You are only given 2 minutes for your choice during the second round of picks) The most intense part of the draft, for me, were those precious five minutes. Should anything go wrong, especially during those five minutes, it would have had to be corrected within seconds to avoid possible fines and penalties from the league. Luckily for us and as per the plan everything worked flawlessly. None of our backup plans or even the backup to the backups were needed. The team acquired three new players and everything is set for next season. Regardless of what kind of planning we did, those five minutes were still nerve racking. I’m glad its over.

And with that, the end of the month is upon us. I finally have some time to breath and start to plan for next year. We have a lot of work ahead of us. The Ford Center is being remodeled and a lot of the technical aspects of the arena have changed since last year. We have to do a bunch of rewiring and redesigning. I’m not to worried at this point. But I’m sure that will change when we get closer to Opening Night. I’m hoping to document some of that work here. I’m not sure how much of it i can actually publish but I’ll do as much as i can.

I have a rant about the Sony Playstation 3. Don’t get me wrong I love my PS3. I bought it as a present to myself for Christmas. I just think that Sony is moving so slowly with its development trying to milk every penny they can before the market forces them to improve their product. I bought my PS3 because of its multimedia functionality and Blue-Ray player rather than the gaming console. I have a few games for it that i play on random occasions. But i don’t use that function nearly as much as i use the multimedia functions. Now that I’ve had the Playstation for a while I’ve truly been able to see its ups and downs. And that is what i want to share.

Good this first. I was able to replace my bulky E-Machine PC with the clean slick PS3. It looks very nice under my TV. The PS3 has HDMI support. This was huge. The quality difference was amazing.  The PS3 also offers a “store” where you can buy/rent games and videos as well as a Hard Drive to store them on. In theory you can store all your videos and music on the local hard drive.  I don’t use it as i probably should but i can see how it could benefit some.

Now for the Con’s. My biggest problem with the PS3 is that it doesn’t support 3rd party applications or addons such as codec packs. Because of this, the damned thing can’t play half of the videos i have. Sony suggests i convert all my files to MP4 or some other bulky format. This not only costs me time but also costs me a lot of disk space. This also means that support for 3rd party services such as Netflix or Hulu are next to impossible to add. Because of this mess, those of us who want these features and conveniences have to go out and create workarounds and Mcgiver-ish solutions so that we can easily access ALL of our content on the PS3.

And thus the Media Server applications were born. The catch? This solution requires a PC to be on that has all your file stored on it. Thus defeating the purpose of the PS3 hard drive.(Not that 160GB can hold much…)  There are several out there. I use PS3 Media Server. I’ve also used TVersity & PlayOn. All of these have similar functionality and they all provide the same basic thing. They offer a way to let you play ALL of your videos and music on (or rather through) the PS3 regardless of what type of file it is. This is HUGE. This means that no matter what kind of file it is, the Media Server application can take that file and “transcode” it into a compatible PS3 file. Don’t get me wrong on this. I love these types of software and am thankful they exist. The problem i have is that Sony refuses to add native support for this type of thing ON THE PS3. If they only allowed 3rd party codec packs none of us would have to mess around with these Media Servers. We would be able to store all our files ON the PS3 and truly use it as a Multimedia Center. It would benefit both Sony AND the developers. Just like Apple, the Sony App store could carry these codec packs from various developers allowing the developers to charge a fee for them. Sony would get a cut and the developer would get paid for his time and effort.

Until then, all of us in the real world are stuck downloading various software to our PCs in hopes that it will be able to stream our videos to the PS3 so that we can watch them when and how we want.

I got to see Star Trek the movie on Thursday. It was awesome. Even if you aren’t a Star Trek fan I believe you will enjoy this movie. JJ took a lot of the nerdiness out of the show and put a lot more action in. It felt like watching Transformers or the Matrix. It was a good balance I think. A lot of people were expecting him to screw it up by either being to nerdy or not being nerdy enough. I think he found a good balance that will satisfy all the long time Star Trek fans such as myself as well as a lot of the newer non-trekkies who are more interested in actions films in general. I would highly recommend it. I’m hoping to go see it again in sometime soon in one of the larger theaters such as the Cine Capri at Harkins.

In other news, I’ve been wanting to get back into ham radio, scanners, and war driving. I unboxed some of my old radios and re-programmed them with a few frequencies i still remember. I would like to get my main ham radio (the radio on the far left of the pic) and my portable (the Kenwood in the middle) programed with the new updated ham frequencies. My scanners (the two radios on the right) have a few channels in them. I haven’t touched police frequencies in a long long time. The handheld scanner has Edmond in it only. I actually keep this scanner at my desk so i can find out whats going on when i hear sirens around my apartment. Once i get a list of all the frequencies i need to input I’ll publish the list on here. Probably in a new tab at the top. It should be interesting.

Another thing i wanted to talk about was Champions Online. I’ve been reading a lot about this game and it looks amazing. I’ve watched a few videosof the game play and it looks like a lot of fun. The main thing I’m looking forward to in this game is the character customizations. Cryptic is the same company that did City of Heroes/Villains. And if you remember anything about that game, its probably the character customization process. From what I’ve read, the character creations process is City of Heroes on steroids. I can’t wait. Jon and his friend are both doing elemental animals as their first characters. His friend is calling his character Fire Mare and Jon is doing Static Panda. I need to come up with a catchy character to play soon.

Time for something new. I couldn’t think of a catchy title… so its just Random Links for Clicking. Basically, if you’re bored here are some interesting finds for for the week:

• Uncrate – Interesting blog with random products you might want to buy
• GeekPad – Very funny and interesting tech blog
• Cyber Warfare and the Army
• The 10 Most PUzzling Ancient Artifacts
• StarCraft 2 Beta opened on Wednesday
• Cute Overload – Very cute animals that will make you smile
• Learn Morse Code- I still need to do this. Though the General and Extra licenses no longer require CW to pass
• WoW Player gets power, gets corrupted, gets banned – Interesting read about a player who obtained Martin Fury
• Stupid girl run over by her own SUV during “Ghost ride” stunt – Natural Selection at its finest
• $330,000 photo of Air Force one – Honestly, i think a monkey with a disposable camera could have taken a better photo…
• The Hunt for Gollum- Still haven’t watched this in its entirety yet. Looks amazing though. Fan created prequel to the films. (Fan fiction, not cannon)