Mono for FC4

Finally there appears a mono build for FC4. I’ve been running the FC3-packages since FC4 was released. This may be a short happiness, however, with FC5 test1 scheduled for release 7/11.

Busy weekend. Started preparing for the Halloween-party. Bought black food dye and made some black chocolate, and started creating eyes. Really wanted to have blue irises, but the blue dye was sold out. Baked three kinds of bread. Vacuuming and cleaning have to be postponed.

My favourite kitchen-gadget shop had copper on sale. Bought a small pot.

Encoding mp4 with faac

Tested the different AAC object types supported by faac: LC, Main and LTP. I ran the test on an old HP xw4000 and noted elapsed time as reported by faac. The test-material was a 7:35 long track, sampled from vinyl. It had been processed from WAV to OGG and back to WAV again.

Type Time (s)
LC 48.5
Main 72.7
LTP 4169.7

Are the longer running times worth it? I couldn’t detect any difference with the tested material (not ideal to start with), and the files are slightly larger for Main and LTP. And there’s the matter of compatibility with iPods. The only one that works is LC, so I won’t bother.

Winter

Two months to christmas. It was freezing cold outdoors, and while waiting for the commuter train this morning I noticed a few small snowflakes in the air.

On the train home I finished “Knife of Dreams”. (spoiler-warning) I feel like it is missing a chapter or two. The cliff-hanger at the end was a bit too lame, and there seems to be so much that needs to happen before the next book. If the 12’th book really is to be the last one, I fear that it will be too crowded with action, ad too different in tempo compared to the last five or so… Are there any new facts in KoD? Not too much; we’ve got a confirmation that Taim really is one of the forsaken. Hmm, that’s it. No more light on the identity of Mesaana in the tower (I suspect Laras, the cook, she’s just too suspect). Nothing on Sheriam’s strange behaviour. No more clues as to who really killed Asmodean, not that I expected any anyway.

Reading Narnia to Kajsa worked.

Halloween

Just gave up. I tried reading a chapter from The chronicles of Narnia for my 5.5 YO daughter. She just couldn’t be still. After half a page she even tried crawling under a bed-sheet. I hope it is due to her having a cold, and not related to her age. (Teenage may start early with some…) She usually listens rather carefully when I read to her, and sometimes reads a sentence herself.

Today we started planning a halloween-party. We quickly invited three of our best friends and families. That’s enough to fill up our little house; 15 people. I’ll be making a cake decorated as a pumpkin. Water frozen inside a latex-glove may be a “cool” hand in a bowl of drink. My special chocolate candy, dipped in white chocolate and decorated with an “iris” will be delicious eye-bulbs with the coffe.

My patch to tagtool is now rewritten. The first try used a library called mp4ff, but it turned out to be available only in a heavily patched version of faac from freshrpms for Fedora only. Now I use mp4v2 from an unpatched faac. It also supports setting cover-art, so now most of the tunes in my iPod sports a teeny-weeny (10mm x 10mm) cd-cover-image. Looks rather cute. I nailed a few show-stopper bugs today, but there are a few more minor ones to weed out before I send anything to the maintainer. Those interested have to make do with a screen-shot for the moment.

Screenshot of tagtool with mp4 and cover-art support

Kittens and music

This is really fun. The results are almost random, but I’ve managed fairly well with my strategy; low elevation (~20) and high power. The idea is to give the kitten as much forward velocity as possible, hoping for the bombs to give enough altitude. Results? some 1600+ feet as best, and 1500+ second.
Yesterday I ordered some CDs. Yes, real CDs, not just single tracks from iTunes or similar. Two albums with Maceo Parker and three old ones with the Bar Kays. Today, another three of each. There’s some funk to fill my iPod with 🙂