I’ve been trying to convert a load of old DVD-R’s to AVI files as its easier to have a fileserver full of movies than to search through hundreds of discs. Its taken days to do just half a dozen or so – mainly due to bit-rot and scratched discs, but also due to old versions of DVDShrink3 and CloneDVD2 corrupting the disc structure, so programs like CloneDVD Mobile and DeVeDe are not only taking 2-3 hours to do the transcode, but also hours to read the bloody discs and correct the structure.

Its really annoying to start a 2-pass transcode at 10pm and get up in the morning to find it still sitting there at 38% of the first pass due to a tiny scratch on the disc! Will Bluray be the answer to longterm storage – CD/DVD certainly aren’t up to it.

I’ve fixed a few issues with my website – replaced the LWP::Simple blog fetch with simple wget, so that I don’t have to compile a million Perl modules and updated some pages like ‘About Me' that still listed me as being 25! I’ve also upgraded WordPress to the latest version, and gone through upgrade Hell as usual.