OK, there have been some transitions, a lot of learning and some rejuvenation
of WWW-building enthusiasm! I recently built my first Linux system and it's
taught me a lot of ground-level networking stuff that, if you are building
and maintaining pages, it's helpful to know. I'm still not very near being
able to do the complete redesign the site badly needs - but my intentions
are good and I am slowly progressing towards that in the not-too-distant future.
But anyway, on to the things I've been looking at recently.
Xine - DVD the Linux Way
I'm a convert of the Linux DVD player Xine. The really cool thing about it
is it lets you snapshot images... like these.
Yup, they are the wrong aspect ratio. I'll delve into this later, but
essentially the DVD image size is 720 by 480 pixels (aspect ration of
720/480 = 1.5) whereas the original aspect ratio of the film was Academy
Flat (1.85:1). The images above are too narrow - for them to still be
480 pixels high they need to be 888 pixels wide. Below is an example.
Above is the Beast at 720x480 pixels. Below he is restored to the proper
aspect ratio of 1.85:1 (888x480 pixels), as seen in the theater.(I didn't
take a lot of care over the resampling, but you get the idea).
The Great Laserdisc Hunt
I found a mint laserdisc of 'Beauty and the Beast: Work In Progress (1991 New
York Film Festival)' on EBay and bought a secondhand Sony laserdisc player from
a colleague at work - I'm hunting for the elusive tattoo!
I'll let you know...