Rob A's (Im)personal Blog

Bright Ideas is a category I am using to capture my bright ideas, or at least ideas I think are bright. These include real work things I'm working on, items of pure speculation, and clever things I have discovered.

Enjoy!

Now that I have finally succumbed to the the temptation of a blackberry (I got the 8830 World Edition), I figured I needed to put it to good use. One good use is watching video on it . Unfortunately, figuring out how to convert it to a format the 8830 would like was a pain in the but. I turned to my favorite video swiss army knife FFMPEG and finally figured out the settings to use.

To simplify the process of converting, I created two batch files called bb_4x3.bat and bb_16x9.bat and added shortcuts to them in my "Send To" folder. Now I just Right Click and Send to on pretty much any video file, and out drops one in the same directory converted nicely for the 8830.

Here is the 4x3 aspect ratio batch file (all one line):

c:\utils\ffmpeg\ffmpeg -i %1 -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -b 400k -r 24 -s 320x240 -aspect 4:3 -acodec aac -ar 22050 -ac 2 -ab 48k %1.mp4

And the 16x9 aspect ratio batch file (all one line):

c:\utils\ffmpeg\ffmpeg -i %1 -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -b 400k -r 24 -s 320x180 -aspect 16:9 -acodec aac -ar 22050 -ac 2 -ab 48k %1.mp4

So if the input file is bob.avi, the resulting converted file will be bob.avi.mp4 and if the extra extionsion burried in there bugs you, just rename the file

The details of the format are:

• mp4 encapsulation
• mpeg4 video, 400k bitrate, 24 frames per second
• 320x240 for full screen, 320x180 for letterbox
• aac audio, 48k bitrate, 22050 sample rate, stereo

Traveling the internet I came across a most excellent site, Descending Ashtray. While flipping through it with the enthusiams of a kid with a new comic book, I found this entry for the Dual Drill. Never having seen this before, I must agree it looks like a clever idea, but I would think, that it just wouldn't be sturdy enough with the rotating head and extra mechanism.

I'll stick with my drill, the Black and Decker Firestorm. Not only did it come with a charging station that is also a radio, but the drill head smaps off to reveal a (changable) screw-driver bit underneath. Works great for me. Plus I bought it at a charity auction for a great price! I wanted to show a picture of it, but after compositing three different pictures (the base, the drill and how the head comes off) I figured, "Hey, that would make a pretty cool animated GIF!". So here it is, my first GIMP animation:

The Black and Decker Firestorm Drill. Animation done in the GIMP.