Author: Eric Mesa

  • thanks God

    Sure, this is mostly a technology (read linux) blog with some politics thrown in. But long-time readers know I am a religious person. Not a religous fanatic, but religious nontheless. I just wanted to take a post to express my gratitude for things that have been going so well for me. For instance, my mother’s…

  • Ten Best Flickr Mashups

    Webmonkey has run a special on the ten best flickr mashups. What is a mashup with respect to flickr? I only know of mashups as songs where different groups put their songs together to create something new such as Jay-Z and Linkin Park. Basically, since flickr has opened up their API (as has Google with…

  • Flickr photos 6-10

    #6 this photo has been wonderful for me because not only is it one of my most favorite of my recent photos, but others have agreed! In just one week it went from #99 to #6. In fact, it was originally #8 when I was writing the list of #1-5. #7 – taking this picture…

  • My Top 5 flickr photos

    It’s amazing how much of a difference there is between the number of views of my #1 viewed photo and my #2. They then follow in groups close to each other in number. (#5-10 to follow tomorrow) #1 with 352 Views is #2 with 246 (more than 100 less!) #3 with 242 #4 with 234…

  • My GIMP Wishlist

    What GIMP needs to implement for me to stop using Adobe. (Thus saving myself and others $600+) RAW Support (preferably the new standard of DNG) 16bit File Editing XMP Tag support Panorama Tool Adjustment layers Number 1 is important for those of us who wish to capture the camera’s RAW data and then losslessly manipulate…

  • HD DVD To to leave Early HD Adopters High and Dry

    Leave it to content providers to mess everyone up. Slashdot reports that, in an effort to stop piracy, the HD signal in the component jacks of HD DVD players will be down-sampled because it’s analog and letting it come out at normal quality would allow pirates to get around their copyright protections. This is BS!…

  • ReactOS – The Soap Opera-like Twin

    So, as readers of my blog know, one alternative to Windows is Linux. (Formally GNU/Linux) Another alternative I haven’t talked much about is BSD, another Unix derivative. Both of these are great operating systems, but they aren’t Windows. For the most part, this doesn’t matter. If I can do the same stuff on Linux, why…

  • The Constitution!

    The other day I decided to read the Constitution of the USA. I don’t know what compelled me to do this, other than the fact that I stumbled upon it online. I don’t have anything specific to say about it except that I’m amazed at how they thought of nearly every contingency. For example, the…

  • Fedora Core 5 Test Release 3 is out!

    Fedora Core 5 has moved one step closer to being finalized with the release of Test Release 3. I’m currently downloading the torrent of the DVD because I think I want to go ahead and put it on my main machine. Yeah, it’s a test release, but I’m so impatient to get working with Beagle…

  • thoughtcrime

    I don’t agree with a lot of what the current administration is doing. While I don’t necessarily believe that G. W. Bush is evil like Mr. Burns and wishes to bring the US and England together under IncSoc, I do agree with some congressmen that he has set some perilous precedents if congress just leaves…

  • Gnome 2.14 Preview

    Those of you who have been daring enough to run Gnome 2.13 already know most of this stuff. However, if, like me, you can’t afford to have unstable desktops, this page contains a preview of what will be in the latest offering from Gnome. It looks as though the changes will only be incremental in…

  • First Impression: Theora

    On the face of things, Theora seems to be a better codec simply based upon the fact that the OGG file is 50 MB compared to the 185 MB MPEG file. I still have to do some tests to see if this comes at the cost of worse quality in the picture or sound, but…

  • Free Video

    To encode your video in a free codec (ie not proprietary), use Theora from Xiph.org. This codec is still in ALPHA stage (as in, not even beta!) so don’t use it for mission critical stuff just yet. However, xine and mplayer already play the codec. If you try to convert an avi to theora (using…

  • The Snow did indeed remain for a while

  • Mid-Feb Snow Haiku

    Winter’s Returning: Snow falls gingerly downward. Will you stay long, snow?