I’ve just revisited transcoding DVD to XviD as per this post and it seems to fail on the latest mencoder – it only encodes the first chapter of the title. The fix seems to be to specify the title and use dvdnav instead of dvd urls, so something like this (title 20, all chapters):

mencoder dvdnav://20 -dvd-device HERBIE -ffourcc DIVX -af volume=10 \
-aspect 16:9 -of avi -noodml -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc -lavcopts \
vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=1242:abitrate=128:threads=2 -audio-preload 0.8 \
-delay 0.1 -lameopts cbr:br=128 -vf scale=640:360,harddup \
-info name="HERBIE" -ofps 25 -alang en  -o herbie_fully_loaded.avi```

I upgraded the [XBMC](http://t3ch.yi.se/) on my main Xbox to Atlantis beta2, so its more like Plex on the Mac now, with MediaStream interface (now with 4:3 support) and all the Linuxport upgrades.

I'm awaiting my replacement snooker cue tips from eBay. In true eBay style the guy promised to send me some samples for free so I could size them up, then he sent me an invoice for something like a tenner for three tips! So I just ordered 50 of the 13mm for 15 quid and told him to forget the “free samples”, these better fit or the lot are going back on eBay!

The plumbers seem to have left – I say “seem to” as they didn't say they were done, or when they'd be back with the electrician and chimney-sweep. I have a wire hanging out of a wall for the thermostat and a mains socket that needs moving so that it doesn't touch the copper pipes! The gas is being turned on on Tuesday, so they'd better get their arses back here quick if they want their cheque.

I just watched [WALL-E](http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/), which so many people have said is “film of the year”. Well they most be smoking some good shit, as it was crap! Basically its Johnny-5 from Short Circuit playing the part of Will Smith in I Am Legend. The only two words spoken throughout the whole film are “wally” and “eva”.

I also watched [Tropic Thunder](http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0942385/), which looked like it was going to be an Apocalypse Now spoof, but was actually pretty rubbish. The best bit was the faux-trailer at the beginning. I can't believe how many big-name actors were in such a rubbish movie.

Then there's [Narnia 2: Prince Caspian](http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0499448/), which was a darker sequel (much like how Return To Oz was a bit psycho) and had lost most of its magic. It had turned into an action movie more than a fantasy. Apparently another sequel is being made, although it looks like the two older children won't be in it – probably as the oldest girl is now 20, which explains the enormous tits!

Finally, [Step Brothers](http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0838283/) was an OK Will Ferrell movie, typical to his style though. The Ballsack scene was incredibly funny 😉

M&D came over and helped me clean up my houses after the plumbers’ mess. The plumbers have actually been quite good at cleaning up, but the brick dust etc gets everywhere. The place is lovely and clean now and I’ve put some summer stuff like fans in the loft for a few months as well.

The plumbers aren’t quite finished with the central heating yet, although they say they will be within 3 days, they only have the thermostat, hot water tank and a bit of piping in the loft to do now.

Yesterday was my niece’s first birthday. Everyone came over to my place and ate/drank way too much – it was like Xmas, especially as I’m having leftovers for lunch tomorrow! Amelia was very happy and not at all noisy, Jacques was having fun too.

Pip has some photos and I made a video – ripped using the Mac’s Firewire/iMovie and converted to DVD-quality MPEG on my new Linux box at astounding speed, it transcoded about 3Gb of DV to MPEG2 in 8mins.

Over the last few days I’ve been installing a few different instances of Oracle into VirtualBox machines.

To ease the OS install headache I made a CentOS 5.2 guest with all the Oracle kernel optimisations and filesystem layouts as well as the required packages (such as the legacy C++ libraries). I then cloned that twice – once for Oracle10gR2 and once for Oracle11iR1; using the instructions here; which are essentiallty: clone the VDI file, register a new VM, change the UUID and mac address and attach the new disk.

The gas installers have finally come back to finish the job – although they seem to be staring at the sewage pipe they broke and the longer bit of replacement pipe they brought with them with baffled expressions! Its quite a warm day today.

I installed VirtualBox on the new Core2Quad last night under Fedora9. There seems to be an issue running XP under VB – it uses 100% of one core of the CPU, I thought it was because I installed XP64, but it seems its a bug in XP in that it uses an ACPI kernel – the fix apparently is to replace it with a standard kernel, but it can’t be replaced in XP64, only 32-Bit. I couldn’t be bothered to reinstall XP so I installed 2003 R2 and upgraded to SP2 and even ran Windows Update from Linux: