creating a DVD from the edited video

http://lwn.net/Articles/263387/

Many of us have burned CDs and found the process to be relatively straightforward - the biggest obstacle is often just getting past the grumpiness built into cdrecord and its latter-day derivatives. Creating data DVDs is not a whole lot harder. So one might be inclined to approach the task of creating a video DVD with a "this will be easy" attitude. It is, in fact, a task just about anybody can learn to do, but it is on a different order of complexity than creating a CD full of music. A video DVD is, in truth, a program complete with its own hierarchical structure, menus, and code written for the simple virtual machine lurking within every DVD player. Creating a playable DVD requires writing that program.

If DVDs are programs, then the one compiler available for Linux systems is the command-line dvdauthor tool. Regardless of how one builds a DVD, dvdauthor will be involved in the process at some point. This tool requires a collection of video objects representing the actual video titles and also implementing the menus, subtitles, and more. It's all tied together via a complex XML file (example) which is compiled by dvdauthor to create the final product.

It is possible to create all of these pieces by hand, and, doubtless, Real Linux Video Jocks would not do it any other way. One can use dvdauthor to help with the generation of parts of the XML file. There is documentation which seems fairly complete, if a bit terse. But the fact of the matter is that most people attempting to use this tool directly will give up in despair. There is no reason why DVD authors should have to work at this level; dvdauthor is essentially an assembler which, while being absolutely essential to do most of the heavy lifting, should be hidden from most polite company. DVD creation is a visual task; there should be visually-oriented tools for this job. The good news is that these tools do, indeed, exist.

Utilities for Windows

http://www.hanselman.com/tools

Innovative Designs and Devices

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/07/monday-inspiration-innovative-designs-and-devices/

Monday Inspiration: Innovative Designs and Devices

Steve Jobs stated once that the "design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." While this statement has proven to be crucial over thousands of years, one shouldn't misinterpret it by emphasizing the functionality despite the design. When it comes to product design, the significance of aesthetics of a given device, the way its design looks and feels, determines the choice of the customer once the functionalities of multiple devices are more or less similar. If supported by sound user interface and a well-tested, clean implementation, innovative design solutions can drastically enhance the user experience.

This article presents innovative, futuristic gadgets, devices, designs and concepts. Unless explicitly specified, none of these cut-edge concepts is currently being manufactured. None of them is available for end-users which is why neither the price nor links to the stores are mentioned.

Writing programs, open source flight simulator and robust copying in Vista

http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html

Scrivener is a word processor and project management tool created specifically for writers of long texts such as novels and research papers. It won't try to tell you how to write - it just makes all the tools you have scattered around your desk available in one application.

http://hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom
For people who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter, but live in the digital world. WriteRoom is a full-screen writing environment. Unlike the cluttered word processors you're used to, WriteRoom is just about you and your text. Requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later

http://www.flightgear.org/

The FlightGear flight simulator project is an open-source, multi-platform, cooperative flight simulator development project. Source code for the entire project is available and licensed under the GNU General Public License.

The goal of the FlightGear project is to create a sophisticated flight simulator framework for use in research or academic environments, for the development and pursuit of other interesting flight simulation ideas, and as an end-user application. We are developing a sophisticated, open simulation framework that can be expanded and improved upon by anyone interested in contributing.

There are many exciting possibilities for an open, free flight sim. We hope that this project will be interesting and useful to many people in many areas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy

Robocopy, or "Robust File Copy", is a command-line folder replication tool. It was available as part of the Windows Resource Kit, and introduced as a standard feature of Windows Vista.

Robocopy is designed for reliable mirroring of folders or folder trees. It has features to ensure all NTFS attributes and properties are copied, and includes additional restart code for network connections subject to disruption.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/11/UtilitySpotlight/default.aspx

Public domain maps

http://www.openstreetmap.org/
OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by
people like you.

OpenStreetMap allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a
collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.

OpenStreetMap's hosting is kindly supported by the UCL VR Centre
(http://www.vr.ucl.ac.uk/) and bytemark. http://www.bytemark.co.uk/

Obscure Google Search Tricks & Neuro-linguistic programming

http://lifehacker.com/339474/top-10-obscure-google-search-tricks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming

Neuro-linguistic programming

Analyzing this further, Grinder and Bandler stated that there were a few common traits such people – whether top therapists, top executives or top salespeople – all seemed to share:

1. Everything they did in their work, was pro-active (rather than reactive), directed moment to moment by well-formed outcomes ^[17] rather than formalized fixed beliefs
2. They were exceedingly flexible in approach and refused to be tied down to using their skills in any one fixed way of thinking or working ^{[18] [17]}
3. They were extremely aware moment by moment, of the non-verbal feedback (unconscious communication and metaphor) they were getting, and responded to it ^{[18] [17]} - usually in kind rather than by analyzing it ^[19]
4. They enjoyed the challenges of difficult ("resistant") clients, seeing them as a chance to learn rather than an intractable "problem"
5. They respected the client as someone doing the best they knew how (rather than judging them as "broken" or "working")
6. They had certain common skills and things they were aware of and noticed, intuitively "wired in" ^{[18] [20]}
7. They worked with great precision, purpose, and skill ^{[21] [20]}
8. They kept trying many many different things until they learned enough about the structure holding a problem in place to change it ^{[18] [17]}

They summarized their findings:^[17]

"You need only three things to be an absolutely exquisite communicator. We have found that there are three major patterns in the behavior of every therapeutic wizard we've talked to — and executives, and salespeople. The first one is to know what outcome you want. The second is that you need flexibility in your behavior. You need to be able to generate lots and lots of different behaviors to find out what responses you get. The third is you need to have enough sensory experience to notice when you get the responses that you want..."

firefox macros extension to record actions in firefox

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3863

iMacros for Firefox
by iOpus
If you love the Firefox web browser, but are tired of repetitive tasks like
visiting the same sites every days, filling out forms, and remembering
passwords, then iMacros for Firefox is the solution you've been dreaming
of! iMacros was designed to automate the most repetitious tasks on the web.
If there's an activity you have to do repeatedly, just record it in
iMacros. The next time you need to do it, the entire macro will run at the
click of a button! With iMacros, you can quickly and easily fill out web
forms, remember passwords, download information from other sites, scrape
the Web (get data from multiple sites), and more. You can keep the macros
on your computer for your own use, or share them with others by embedding
them on your homepage, blog, company Intranet or any social bookmarking
service. The uses are limited only by your imagination! ***Whatever you do
with Firefox, iMacros can automate it.***
Version 6.0.1.6 — December 30, 2007