In preparation for my Mac Mini media centre I am currently using my Dell PC (see previous post about sale!) in order to rip all of my DVD collection to .mp4 files so that I can use them on the Mac Mini media centre.  It takes some time.

The photo shows my task.  I have a large wallet of DVDs and I am currently a third of my ways through them.  I have already ripped them all to iPod size, now I am doing them all at 720p (DVD size).  It takes about 40 minutes for each DVD to run through handbrake and leave me with a file that I can play on Quicktime on any machine.  Well worth it in the end I think.

Today’s photo is short and sweet.  I will be selling the Dell PC below very soon, once I have finished using it to rip all my DVDs to MP4 files.

It is an excellent machine that does this job well. I could do it on my Mac but it is one of those things that you need to let it run without using the machine, which is not practical really.  The specifications are:

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8400 processor (3.00GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB cache)
• 4Gb RAM
• 300Gb Hard Disc
• Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium – English
• Internal PCI 802.11g Wireless Network Card
• 256MB ATI® Radeon™ HD 2400 XT graphics card
• Dell™ 22″ Black Wide Flat Panel (E228WFP) – UK/Irish
• Dell 2 Button USB Scroll Optical Mouse
• 16x DVD +/- RW Drive
• 19-in-1 Media Card reader
• USB Keyboard

I will pop a link to eBay when I list it should you wish to bid.

At the moment my son seems rather obsessed with musical instruments.  It is the Xylophone at Granddad’s and the keyboard at Granddad Al’s.

In this instance it was the Xylophone.  He was well into it, copying is granddad good and proper.  Maybe he is going to be a future musician?  Who knows!

Everyone says that we you get kids your house just becomes a bomb site.  My wife and I decided that this definitely was not going to be the case in our house.  How wrong we were.  After all the Christmas and Birthday gifts my son received from our wonderful and generous friends and family, storage has become an issue.  Today we decided to take control and have a tidy.

This was kick started with the gift on a bookcase from friends around the corner, who were, coincidentally also having a clear out. The great thing was that bookcase matched the furniture in Harry’s room perfectly.  We certainly needed some storage in order to store all the toys that Harry accumulated over the holiday period.  The bookcase certainly goes along way to doing that.  I just need to take the time to fasten it to the wall now to stop if from toppling over, but will probably do that when I have the drill out in a few weeks when boarding the loft.

At the same time we also made some changes in the arrangements downstairs, moving things around so that while keeping some toys out and ready for Harry to play with we got our house back!

We have had snow cover now ever since Tuesday morning (5 days ago) here in the north west of England.  With the freezing temperatures remaining over the last week the snow has now turned to compacted ice and there seems no sign of it thawing in the near future.

The rabbits don’t seem to bothered by the snow.  We have put some extra hay in their hutch, but they just seem to eat it rather than using it for insulation.  As you can see the snow in their pen is getting a little dirty and yellow.  The trouble is, is that it is impossible to clean up really.  It is very dangerous to try as you end up on your backside, and sweeping it up in the shovel doesn’t work.  They will be OK for a few more days, but like I said they don’t seem right bothered.

Having used Facebook for a long time now to connect with friends I find myself more and more frustrated with it all the time.  In fact there are several things that I just do not like about Facebook anymore, and therefore I am seriously considering not using it. Here is why, but perhaps you can persuade me other wise.

Facebook started back in 2004 (5 years ago) originally for college students to connect with each other around campus.  Since then it has grown to an online community of millions of users and as such, certainly in my opinion, it is loosing its appeal all the time. Other social or micro blogging platforms, such as Twitter are starting to grow much faster and gain in numbers of users, with good reason.

So why am I starting to fall out with Facebook?  Well I suppose the number 1 reason are the moment is that it is just too complicated!  It has so many different applications and features, not to mention the adverts etc that when you are checking your news feed there is simply just too much going on in my opinion.  I think what I am really interested in reading is friends status messages.  I want to connect with friends by using Facebook to find out what they are doing and maybe even to look at photos of friends when they are posted.  However I am finding more and more than my news feed ends up full on content that just gets in the way, such as applications, games and quizzes that friends and connections have used. Don’t get me wrong I am not in any way having a go at people for using these items, my problem is with Facebook for not providing a quick and simple way of hiding all these updates, rather than having to hide individual ones.

Reason number 2 would have to be Facebook’s terms and conditions.  Firstly the fact that at the moment they seem to be changing all the time.  People are never going to know what terms they are bound by if they are revised on a monthly basis.  There are also some rather striking parts of the terms that I do not like at all.  For example this statement below which talks about the content that you post to Facebook:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof

If that was not bad enough they even state in their terms and conditions that even if you leave Facebook then they still own all the content that you have placed on the site:

The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other

I suppose that my third reasons for falling out with Facebook would lie in the Privacy settings.  About a month ago Facebook changed the way privacy settings worked and in fact to their credit they gave the user a little more control of what could and could not be seen by people.  However what disappointed me was that to make these changes, all my privacy settings that were set up we reset to default, meaning that much of the content I had protected was no open to anyone.  It was fortunate that I checked in the privacy settings one time and saw that everything had changed.

Facebook seem to be more and more dictating what users can do and putting restrictions on things.  At least this is what I feel like.  It feels like their goal is to get everyones to share all their information with everyone and not allow the user to be in control anymore.

What are your thoughts on Facebook?  What about those terms and conditions?  Have you every had any problems with Facebook and if so how did you get them resolved?  I would love to hear people’s opinions on this one as perhaps it is just me?

In one of the recent Mac Format magazines that I have received through my new subscription I came across a review of this Hard Disc Drive Enclosure that looked just like a Mac Pro.

Now I grant you that at close to £50 it is rather expensive for what it does.  It can take any SATA hard drive and it a USB 2 interface and mains powered.  However I thought it looked so nice, a miniture version of a Mac Pro that I just had to have one.  I happened to be on the look out for an external enclosure to turn my spare 500Gb drive into a USB drive that I could store all my videos on.

I have been encoding my DVD collection into iPhone movies that I am now storing on the external drive that this enclosure mounts. Works really well plugged into my Time Capsule so that it acts as a wireless drive and also looks really cool on the desk!