Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

How To: Install Current FFmpeg and FFmpeg-PHP in CentOS/RHEL with x264, Xvid, MP3, AAC and more!

First of all, I’m going to assume you already have httpd and php installed. If you don’t have them already you should install them now. I recommend Jason Litka’s Yum Repository.

This guide is written with bash comments, so the whole text block below can be copied and pasted into an install.sh file if you’d rather not go through step by step. I wouldn’t recommend it though, as something could always go wrong, and it would be rather challenging hunting down the problem in that massive wall of output lines!

Firefox – Two brackets and a number from being perfect.

I’ve always been an avid supporter of web standards, so I was glad to here that Gecko 1.9, the layout engine used in the Firefox 3 beta, passes the Acid2 test, but I found the future version of Firefox is still lacking one single thing that I feel holds it back rather significantly from being what it could be. That features is the RSS Updates counter that Safari has had for pretty much ever. How long will it take before Mozilla catches on that Firefox’s lack of this simple feature is a deal-breaker for many people? I guess I’ll have to continue using two browsers until Mozilla catches up.

Cowon A3 – Every Nerd wants one, they just don’t know it yet.

For the longest time my MP3 Player was an iPod which, in all appreciation for how it changed the portable media market, is vastly inferior to some of the lesser known Portable Media Players to come out in recent years. The most significant, in my opinion, being the Cowon A3–the perfect portable media player for an anime lover such as myself. Why you ask? Format support–this thing can play just about -anything-. It can play H264 (unforunately it doesn’t yet support Main Profile) and XviD and most importantly; supports all sorts of container formats like OGM and MKV (Matroska Video). What does that all mean? Well, I’ll let you put two and two together; more than half of fansubbed anime is released in H264 format in an MKV container. Until now those have been unplayable on any form of portable media! That’s just the beginning of the A3′s awesomeness!

Forget YouTube–Let’s Vimeo!

For awhile I’ve been using a video service called Stage6 which was similar to YouTube except they offered High Definition video uploading…it wasn’t very ideal though as it needed a proprietary DivX Player to play the videos. Not long ago they closed up shop, so I decided to look around and see if I could find a better video service than YouTube. Well, in my travels I discovered this wonderous creation known as Vimeo! You can upload HD videos up to 720p and they are way, way faster than YouTube! Check the shiny HD video below to see just how awesome Vimeo is.

Monkey Majik – Canadian JPop?

Some may have already heard of them, some may not have. Monkey Majik consists of Takuya “tax” Kikuchi (菊池拓哉, Kikuchi Takuya) on drums, DICK on bass and rather oddly Maynard Plant and Blaise Plant; two Canadian brothers who sing in both Japanese and English and play guitar. It is very unusual for a band with foreign members and foreign languages to attain such a level of popularity in Japan as they have.

Spirits Within deserves a second chance.

Final Fantasy: Spirits Within bombed pretty bad at the box office and I understand why, but it deserved better. Yes, I know that it wasn’t anything like the video games or anything from Square Enix really. However, in it’s own it is a very good movie. I think that if they had not included the Final Fantasy title at all and just called it The Spirits Within it would have been much more successful. It would have been viewed as it’s own stand-alone entity in the Square Enix lineup rather than constantly being compared with all the Final Fantasy video games.

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