labellementeuse | (no subject)

*mooches in* Too tired and blah to have actual content, so, for your disinterest: have spent the past few days working and watching massive amounts of Dark Angel (and when I say massive, I mean started at the beginning and now have like five episodes left? of 42. In four days. I have massive show-watching powers, although right now I'm kind of watched out, hence updating.) I'm mildly horrified to find that I like it; I actually did watch it for awhile, I think maybe the end of the first and beginning of the second season? Or just bits of each. However, I'd totally forgotten everything and now I'm enjoying it, which confirms for me that I am a sucker for a) fantasy and sci-fi shows, especially dystopic, with small casts b)shows with a female main character, I can't help it, even Jessica Alba. Not. One. Word. and c) shows with Jensen Ackles. I like Alec! Although I think, as a character, they constantly make gestures towards giving him depth and then next episode? Nothing. Absence of character growth really isn't a compelling trait.

kphoebe started a "post your classes" meme, which is kind of fun; feel free to comment here and/or steal. Obviously this isn't *quite* complete yet, and relies on my passing four courses, but:

First Year:

Mathematics 1B (aka the dreaded Maths 105, for Engineering students and idiot maths co-majors.)
Astrophysics
Logic
The English Language: Linguistics
Language & Society
French Language 1 (for students having studied French at school)
Shakespeare

Second Year (assuming I pass the last four...):

French Language 2
Algebra & Cryptography
Logic A
Epistemology & Metaphysics
Groups & Symmetry (maths)
Logic B
19th Century Environments (english)
Semantics

Also, every time I watch a non-pirated DVD (which lately happens less often than it doesn't), I am reminded that I don't actually like them. I've been glancing vaguely at SPN box sets and wondering if I can be bothered - I can afford it since, miraculously, I've actually saved over a thousand dollars this year. I'm not totally sure how. However, I do have copies of all the eps already and - this is the kicker - box sets are actually annoying to watch. Firstly, there are the unbelievably annoying piracy announcements at the beginning of the DVD and at the end of each episode. Yep, on most players you can skip them. They're still a drag and also make me want to go out and steal cars and handbags. Secondly, the menu pages? Have music. I cannot describe how annoying I find this, especially when it keeps playing. In other words, if I, say, finish watching one episode and decide to go do something else in another window for ten minutes before watching the next episode, I have to either deal with their crappy music (which also means not playing my own music), eject the disc (which means reloading it) or mute the player (and then forget to unmute it, and wonder why I can't hear anything, and and. Okay, that's not totally their fault, but it's still goddamn annoying.)

And then you have the prohibitive expense of many box sets.

I consider buying box sets out of a combined feeling of guilt (even though, hey, they don't air the damn show in NZ), materialist pleasure in owning the pretty, and wanting to see the extras. But considering that the actual episodes are available elsewhere, for free, without driving me crazy? I can live without the extras. Smarten up, folks.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Why the hell do they have piracy warnings on the DVDs? Anyone who's pirating is not going to see it. *rolls eyes*

It's worse when there's dialogue or SFX. Grr.

EXACTLY. OMG IT IS SO STUPID. IF I WANTED TO PIRATE THIS, HELLO. I WOULD HAVE. BE GRATEFUL YOU'RE GETTING MY MONEY THIS TIME.

Um. Clearly I have more CAPSLOCK!Harry-style rage about this than I thought. PIRACY WARNINGS KILLED MY MUM AND DAD.

Oh, dude, SFX are the worst. the DA submenus have this really annoying *thirty freaking seconds* of music that, like, fades in and out. But the menu-menu has the theme tune which comes COMPLETE with breaking glass and motorcycle SFX. Grarr. Shut UP. *mutes*

Hee. But so true.

I have no control for my current TV, so keep having to turn it down by hand, or having annoying sounds. I've found that playing and then pausing works quite well, though.

Something stupid about DVD sets: If you rip them to your computer you learn that sometimes the reason they can only fit so many episodes is because they put the same episodes on twice. First as a single episode format so you can go "select this episode" and then as a huge episode mash for "play all". You could have half the number of disks.

Oh, dude, *what*? Don't they realise we pay per disc at the video store?

*beats with spoons*

PS: Speaking of illegally pirated stuff! I have not forgotten!

PPS: Er, if theoretically I wanted to rip from DVDs, how would I go about that?

I think it's so that way we can go "oooh! 6 disk set!" Another thing I spotted was that American Dad 'complete season 1' isn't complete season 1. TV.com lists there being more episodes.

No worries, the weekend was "bust your bandwidth" time, so I have a lot of new shiny.

God, they're so stupid. Arg.

Although actually it looks like my new video store, I pay per box set. So if they have the complete box set, it's $15; but if on the other hand they have a part one & part two? $30. *pulls face*

I don't know how to do it for Windows. But I do believe there are a number of free DeCSS + encoding (good keywords for google w/Windows) to do it. I've been recommended to use DVDShrink (http://www.dvdshrink.org/) to fit regular DVDs to DVD-Rs. I'm not sure if it can simply rip video to a hard drive.

Whipe off Windows, install Suse Linux 10.1, and I'll tell you how I'd do it :P

WikiHow will show us the way!

http://www.wikihow.com/Special:LSearch?search=rip+dvd&fulltext=Search

http://www.wikihow.com/Rip-DVDs

I guess I'm gonna have to get that program.

Hollywood is evil, knives are sharp and the Terrists Hate Freedom. What else is new?

1 ...2 ...3 what are we fightin for?
Don't ask me I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam!

Lawks. Thanks for the links!

:)

No prob! I just found out about WikiHow recently and guessed it might have info on that. I suppose it could have info on nearly ANYTHING.

And as I reminded my parents: as long as the music and DVD industries continue to produce disks that cost about a dollar to make and charge me forty dollars or more for them, my guilt at pirating? Nil.

Off to see Meg in an hour or so (with car! Hooray!). Will asy hi for you.

Well, for box sets it's *marginally* more reasonable. I think? If a three-disc set goes for about $40 or $50. But, yeah, it's still dumb, dumb, dumb.

Give her love! Don;t forget Merlin Conspiracy! You probably already left!

I have MC on my bed as I type, because I am not forgetful. It was the first thing she handed me.

I have the best friends *ever*. <3

This post isn't protected? The MPAA ignores New Zealand residents? :-)

While in Korea it was impossible to find House set DVDs. Best of all, no American company will ship region-1 DVDs to Korea, even if it is a APO address (treated like a U.S. postal address). So... I was forced to do the unthinkable.

FORCED.

FORCED, I TELL YOU.

Yeah, sometimes I'm forced like that, too. When they don't even air the damn show in this country...