Excusez-moi

A friend of mine started a group private message on Facebook, which was all conducted in French. Now, I don't know French at a level to be able to understand it, so it was to my surprise when my friend sent me a SMS last night saying "So, are you coming tomorrow?" So, I can only assume that they were talking about having lunch or dinner today.

I thought that it was pretty funny that my friend sent me a SMS this morning saying, "Sorry I realised the whole thing was in French and I didn't realise you wouldn't be able to understand it!"

A filler

As I previewed my blog, I saw the eyesore that is the Mr Men picture. I thought about deleting that picture, but that would remove the utility of the post. So I decided to make this post, in desperate hopes of stuffing it down to oblivion.

Mr Men

I have always pondered about the curious title, 'Mr Men'. I thought that it was some queer artefact of English that combined a plural with singular. It never sounded right. I probably was thinking too hard.

As many of you probably know by now (if you don't, then you will in the next few days), there is a Mr Men phenomena spreading Facebook where an user uploads a picture of Mr Men (or should I say, many Mr Men), and tags each with a friend that closely fits with that description of the Mr Men (Mr Man?).

Seven friends have tagged me as seven individual Mr Men.

Maybe that explains it. I am Mr Men.

Strange encounters

A PhD student contacted me the other day via Facebook. He had a strange request: Would you like to be interviewed simply because you share the same name as someone famous.

Apparently, a Genevois author and French photographer is flying to Sydney to interview people who have this name.

Of course, I agreed.

Cadavre exquis

I have a book, whose inner pages are cut horizontally in three pieces. Each of those three pieces are attached to the internal spiral ring. Each page has a font lettering, and one may mix and match different fonts, determining which looks great with which.

I got this book from someone in a graphic design company, where I worked for experience in high school.

That exquisite corpse.

Why does Kirby get to write fancy and not me

Kirby, in delivering a speech at a conference in Greece on the search for perfection:

I come to the end of this kaleidoscope of ideas. I have followed the thread of Ariadne to lead me through the maze. I hope, like Theseus, I have avoided the Minotaur. The quest for perfection is the product of an evolutionary human desire to improve the species and the world. It has produced reassuring institutions, as I believe the High Court of Australia is. It has produced strong constitutional and legal principles. It has given rise to wonderful moments as perfect as humans can make them, such as the ascent of Everest and the choir bursting into the anthem at Westminster Abbey. It has produced astonishing discoveries of science and marvellous inventiveness. But it has also produced many puzzles and dilemmas, wrongs and dangers. A number of them challenge the future of law.

Right? Well, in an essay, I wrote:

... the thread of Ariadne.

This is a common logic descriptor. Yet, the prof writes, in that red scrawly ink:

What the hell is this?

Damn you Kirby.

Solo Practice University

Imagine that you have completed a legal education. At this point, you will have had a massive debt ratio, a wealth of legal knowledge and a high level of employability. Now, imagine you want to go solo, building your own practice. The debt, wealth of legal knowledge and employability won't help you in some fundamental areas involved in being a solo practitioner -- you need to learn some vital things that they don't teach you at law school. The Solo Practice University aims to correct the educational deficit in this situation.

I have always wanted to be my own boss. That was why I was always interested in the development of the site, and when the opportunity presented itself, won a free scholarship to this university.

I recommend that all law students take a look at this website, as it is a very innovative concept in a new dawn of social media.

Swimming in the rain

Swimming in the Rain, Alex Ostrowski (2008) from www.alexostrowski.com

I have always wondered whether, when it rains very very hard, it is possible to swim through the rain. Thoughts?

Pornographic spaces

In the upcoming semester, I am taking an interesting subject at my university. So I decided to take a sneak peek at the course outline to suss out what the assessments would be like.

Analysis of a pornographic space: 30% of total mark.

The course outline gave some examples:

Strip shows, budget hotel rooms, clubs and pubs, speed dating, a red light district etc.

I don't quite know what kind of space I will analyse. I was talking to my friend about this, and she mentioned that the corporate workplace could work quite well as a pornographic place. You have the females in skirts and stilettos, and ... Well, there were other reasons. I just can't recall them at the moment. 

On a different tangent, I discovered this site. It is the home of a not-for-profit organisation — Porn for the Blind — that produces audio descriptions of videos on porn sites. I wonder what Porn for the Deaf would be like. 

Boyd's ghost

David Boyd, The Dancing Judge (from Savill Galleries)

One of my bosses at the workplace I was at for the past few months is a prominent individual who was a judge in our state's top courts. He also chaired a special inquiry into police corruption that went for years, was instant fodder for the media and cost taxpayers millions.

Today, when I had morning tea in his office, I noticed a painting in the corner. After asking him to confirm my suspicions that the painter was Arthur Boyd, he revealed that it was commissioned his wife in 1997, two years before Boyd's death and right after the special inquiry into police corruption. This painting, he said, was intended to take its place beside brother David Boyd's Separating Masks series.

The painting depicted a judge hiding beneath a mask. The connection to its instant context was unmistakeable.

Having studied Boyd for a year, having gone to his residency for a week, this find was remarkable — Boyd's ghost still haunts.

Inspirations

There is a blog which I read with great interest. 

Its author offered an explanation for his blog's name:

When I first started blogging back in 2001 (at that time it was in Japanese), I made up a word Econoclasm as the blog title. One reason is, as "econo-" implies, I was studying economics (and I am now, too). Another reason is I felt like I was an iconoclast (and I do now, too). The last reason is I liked (and still do like) this tune called Iconoclasm, composed and performed by Buck-Tick. So this is the theme song of Econoclasm.

I made up the word Unconoclasm as the blog title partly because of this blog. Another reason is the fact that I study art history and theory. Iconoclasm is an oft-discussed trope in this secular part of academia. Yet another reason is those NRMA ads that have been in vogue.

Exporting subtitles with videos to DVDs or iPods from EyeTV

There have been issues with Australian and European EyeTV users trying to export their recorded videos with subtitles to iPods or DVDs. The Northern American users of EyeTV do not suffer from this issue, as their format of their subtitles are Closed Captions and supported by the latest update of EyeTV. At the moment, EyeTV does not support Teletext or DVB versions of subtitles. I have a (somewhat lengthy) workflow that can resolve this issue. This was done on a Mac.

You will need three applications other than EyeTV, all of which are easily found and downloadable on the internet. They are:

• iTV2DVD
• D-Subtitler
• Muxo

If you want to do this for burning DVDs, then scroll down until you see the title. For iPods and iPhones, start here.

The Steps for iPod Touch/iPhone/iPods

Open EyeTV

1. Record the program (it does not matter whether teletext is turned on when you record, as EyeTV records teletext anyway)

Open iTV2DVD

1. Browse for the EyeTV file
2. Check either Teletext or DVB  
3. If Teletext is checked, type in the Teletext page that produces subtitles. For Australia and New Zealand, this page is usually "801"
4. Click on the "Output" tab on the top
5. Select DVD image 
6. Make the output folder your Desktop
7. Click "Start!"

What will happen now is that iTV2DVD will make a DVD image. This will be the .iso file on your desktop. What we will need to do is "mount" this DVD image. This is a simple process. Open Terminal.app in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.

1. Type "cd ~/Desktop/"
2. Type "hdiutil mount file.iso" with "file.iso" being the name of the .iso file

What this does is mount the .iso file. Now the Mac will think that you have some kind of DVD. Look on your laptop for an icon of a white disk with the title DVD or something similar. That is your mounted file.

The next step is ripping the subtitles from the DVD to .srt format.

Open D-Subtitler

1. Open the "VIDEO_TS" folder. This is the folder inside the mounted file
2. Click on the green button
3. Follow on screen prompts. When they ask for your prompt at one stage, make sure that the text is wholly black and the background is wholly white. Otherwise, you will need to change the colours. You may need to input/verify what kind of subtitle is displayed if the subtitles are particularly bad.
4. When complete, this program will create a folder called file.srt which you can save onto your Desktop

Open EyeTV

1. Export the recorded video as an iPod video.

Open Muxo

1. Open the iPod video
2. Click the plus symbol to add a subtitle track, which should be file.srt, You may need to delay the subtitles by 1 second
3. If there is a "Chapter" track displayed on the main screen, then remove it. Even though chapters are convenient, removing them will eliminate the possibility of errors
4. Save the file
5. Exit

Now you are done! Copy the iPod video file to the iPod and enjoy. Make sure in your iPod's Settings that, in Video, Closed Captioning is turned on. When you watch the video on your iPod, ensure you click on the screen and click on the lined symbol next to the rewind button.

Steps for Burning DVDs

Open EyeTV

1. Record the program (it does not matter whether teletext is turned on when you record, as EyeTV records teletext anyway)

Open iTV2DVD

1. Browse for the EyeTV file
2. Check either Teletext or DVB  
3. If Teletext is checked, type in the Teletext page that produces subtitles. For Australia and New Zealand, this page is usually "801"
4. Click on the "Output" tab on the top
5. Select burn DVD  
6. Make the output folder your Desktop
7. Click "Start!"