Popularity: 6% [?]

I’ve been enjoying using my Apple AirPort Express to stream music from my laptop to our living room speakers using iTunes. The other evening I wanted to watch a DVD and use the good speakers to get the best sound, but you can’t do that without using a helper program.

I found a program that lets you route any audio signals to your AirPort Express — it’s called Airfoil (free to try out, $25 to purchase) and is made by Rogue Amoeba. It’s very simple to install and run. When I tried playing a DVD, though, the audio didn’t synch properly with the video.

This is the solution I found to fix the audio synchronization problem using VLC to play back the DVD and by adjusting the preferences and using VLC’s ability to buffer audio and adjust the synchronization settings.

1. Open preferences in VLC
2. Click on Advanced tab on bottom of screen
3. Select Input/Codecs
4. Select Access Modules
5. Select DVD with menus [Note: to make this same adjustment when you are playing back regular files as opposed to DVDs, simply select File instead of DVD with menus and continue with the rest of the instructions]
6. Change the default value (300 milliseconds) to 6000. This will increase the amount of audio data buffering to 6 seconds, which should be enough to synchronize the audio playback.
7. Click Save to activate your changes (you may need to quit VLC to ensure the settings become active).
8. Re-open the DVD using VLC and click Play.
9. Click the “f” key repeatedly to adjust the amount of audio synchronization offset. It adjusts the audio offset downwards by 50 millisecond increments. I had to set mine to around -4900 milliseconds to correctly match the audio with the video output on my system. Press the “g” key to increase the offset in the other direction. Watch the actor’s lips and adjust the offset until it matches perfectly.
10. Enjoy listening to your DVD audio through your speakers, streamed wirelessly!

Download VLC (Free Open Source video player)

Download Airfoil

Popularity: 10% [?]

The IT Crowd is so awesomely funny. Tonight’s episode is so funny we’re watching it again. Completely hilarious. LOLed for about half the show.

You must watch this now. Run don’t walk.

1. Get Miro (used to be called Democracy) - this is an Internet TV player http://getmiro.com
2. Copy this URL: http://tvrss.net/search/index.php?show_name=The+IT+Crowd&show_name_exact=true&mode=rss
3. Open Miro, then click Channels > Add Channel. Paste in the subscription URL.
4. The latest episode (season 2, episode 5) should begin downloading.
5. Watch episode and ZOMG LOL.
6. Enjoy the earlier season’s episodes and all new ones which will automatically download to your computer.

One of the funniest lines from this episode said by Moss:

Ah, well, prepare to put mustard on those words, for you will soon be consuming them, along with this slice of humble pie, that comes direct from the oven, of shame, set at gas mark egg on your face.

So freaking funny.

Enjoy.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Miro (the open source video player formerly known as Democracy) is running a contest right now to design a revised one-click subscribe button.

A Fun Little Design Contest
Design up to three buttons and submit them as links in the comments. On August 20th, we’ll create a blog post with all of the submissions.
There aren’t a lot of constraints on what you can submit. Our goal is to have a selection of buttons that would look nice on a blog sidebar or myspace page. We hope to see a variety of sizes and colors.

Here are my three submissions, shown on different backgrounds. My goal for this is to create simple, clean, and usable buttons.

	#FFFFFF	#666666	#000000
Option #1
Option #2
Option #3

I’ll update this post once voting is started so you can vote for my submissions if you like them

Update: Thanks to everyone who voted for my submissions. (I won the grand prize. )

Popularity: 5% [?]

Bruce spent a good amount of time researching the 6 best “green” sports cars. Some awesome pics there, including the Tesla Roadster.

These are our favorite “green” sports cars. Some get awesome gas mileage while smoking the competition, and others use advanced bio-fuels to eek out ever higher performance over their gas-guzzling brethren. Big Oil doesn’t like any of them, because they all mean one thing: if you buy them, Big Oil makes less money.

Read the article and check out the desktops: Fast Wallpapers Blog - Blog Archive - 6 Sexy Sports Cars Big Oil Doesn’t Want You to Buy

Popularity: 8% [?]

Bruce’s project is starting to really flesh out nicely. If you’re looking for some sexy exotic car wallpapers, check out FastWallpapers.com.

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Bruce and I just finished getting the template finished for the new FastWallpapers.com site.

Check it out: Home - Find Car Wallpapers, Car Desktops and Car Pictures at FastWallpapers.com

Popularity: 5% [?]

Very beautiful:

YouTube - Women In Art

(Found it on the Kottke feed on RSS2.com)

Popularity: 3% [?]

My contribution to the retirement gift for Glen and Judy Felch, originally uploaded by gserafini.

I had the pleasure of being a student under both Glen and Judy Felch at Principia College during my Studio Art BA program (1994-1998). As part of their retirement, the Art department is organizing a gift, whereby students and alumni are being invited to contribute a 4″ square piece of artwork that will be mounted on a square block. This is my piece, which shows the pen, notebook and computer that has led to my career as a designer.

In 1996 Judy Felch gave me a piece of advice that has stuck with me ever since. She said, “You should do something with computers and your art.” At the time, all I could imagine was doing something maybe with video games, or Macromedia Director CD-ROMs. The Web was still in its infancy. Shortly after receiving this advice, I typed this into Yahoo’s search box (this was pre-Google): “HTML tutorial”. I read through one the first night, then the next night went through another and actually built my first web page. I trace my subsequent career as a web and user interface designer directly to that excellent advice.

When I first decided to be an art major, I didn’t think that there was anything that I would be able to use my degree for to make any money. I decided to do what I enjoyed the most, however, and I’m happy to say that by embracing not only analog but also digital art I’ve been blessed with a very satisfying and financially rewarding career.

I am very grateful to the Felches, and wish them all the very best as they retire and focus on their own fine-art careers. They are both outstanding teachers, and I am very proud to call them friends.

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Here are some of my favorite pictures from my April 2007 trip to visit my good friend Damon and his family in China. They live in Guangzhou in Guangdong province. I arrived in Hong Kong, then traveled on to Guangzhou. We took a quick day trip to Macau, then a week-long vacation trip to visit Wulingyuan National Park in Hunan province (the first National Park ever created in China). After we got back to Guangzhou it was soon time for me to begin my return trip back to St. Louis, Missouri, USA, by way of Hong Kong to Seoul, Korea to Chicago and then finally back to St. Louis.

Click picture for title and description. None of these pictures were photoshopped or retouched in any way. The night ones were particularly fun to take with long exposures.

Click here to view the entire album of pictures from my trip to China | Slideshow

Popularity: 4% [?]