Cheers to Cooking Channel; jeers to TBS

I've got the urge to capture every single episode of Good Eats again, for the third time.

The first was in the early 2000s with an SD capture card. Back then they didn't have HD anything. The second was when Food Network started airing their programs in HD. And now with Cooking Channel showing Good Eats in HD, I'm inclined to start capturing the hundreds of episodes again, but I can do it right this time. I know about making sure there's no bits of audio after an edited out commercial break. I know how to add chapters to a video file. And the quality is better thanks to my HD capture card.

To Cooking Channel's credit, they aren't showing the old SD episodes with that annoying panorama/stretch-o-vision aspect ratio that Food Network does. Sure, it's stretched, but I can easily shrink it back to 4:3. It's impossible to "un-stretch-o-vision" a picture.

And it's also impossible to uncrop cropped video. TBS apparently doesn't think much of their viewers because they're still showing Seinfeld in "HD" by cropping off the top and bottom of the picture and zooming in. When Funimation released the first Dragon Ball Z DVD sets, they thought they could get away with doing the same thing, but no one liked missing 20% of the picture and eventually Funimation released another DVD set to address the complaints. (And then once more for Dragon Ball Z Kai... and then once more again for the music-fixed DVD release...)

I think I'll try to make my Good Eats encodes a consistent 233 MB, up from the 170 MB my SD encodes were. It'll be down from my usual 440 MB for a 30-minute show without commercials, but I don't think the show requires a high bit rate to begin with, and honestly, there are a lot of episodes. At 233 MB per episode, 18 episodes will fit on a DVD-R. At 440 MB per episode, it would only be 10 episodes per DVD-R.

Dreamcast: flickering s-video cable issue solved

I bought another Dreamcast s-video cable from Retro-Bit since the s-video output from my Madness Gameware VGA box wouldn't work for some reason. Maybe I broke it trying to trick non-VGA games to work by flicking the switch at exactly the wrong time. Well, whatever.

My other Dreamcast VGA box by Naki had working s-video output in addition to composite, but when I tried it, the picture would flicker, which is why I bought another s-video cable.

This Retro-Bit cable had the same flickering problem at first, but once I plugged in both s-video and composite (the cable has both) into my DVDO Edge, the problem went away.

No video while playing purchased videos in iTunes?

Problem: iTunes wouldn't play my purchased videos. Just a black screen with no audio or video.

Solution: Close other programs. In my case, I had MAME with Tekken Tag Tournament running, as well as Blackmagic Media Express in playback mode.

Also, if you ever wanted to skip a few seconds back or forward when playing video in iTunes, hit Ctrl+Alt plus left or right.

Mumon's pearls of wisdom (Persona 4 Golden)

I'm doing New Game Plus on Persona 4 Golden and right now I'm trying to (1) get the Hardcore Risette Fan trophy, (2) get as many skill cards from Chagall Cafe as I can, and (3) get the new "accomplice" ending.

Here's everything I've heard Mumon say:

• Have you heard this before? The question of whether or not dogs have souls. / Sounds stupid, right? But that’s all right. Questions like those are what you call Zen dialogue.

• Hey, are you all right? That coffee might have been a little too stimulating for you. / Well… climbing the stairway to maturity means you’ve gotta grit your teeth sometime and take that first step.

• When a flag blows in the wind, is it the flag that moves? Or the wind? / It’s neither, kid. What moves… is your heart.

• Ah, What great weather. I haven’t seen a sky this clear in ages… / Ha… I’m not talking about the sky out there. I know that your heart’s always clear as a summer’s day.

• Have you heard this before? About how a strong man’s weakness is his first defeat. / But… a guy like that isn’t strong. Someone who’s truly strong will never back down.

• Some things are real in this world, and some things are fake. Most people don’t have an eye for the difference… / But even so… if what’s real loses hope, don’t you think this world is done for?

• You know, kid… you remind me a lot of my brother. Especially the way that you act cool even if you have to force it. / But not everything in this world is fine. Sometimes, it’s just as important to show the ugly side of yourself…

• Has there ever been a time when you couldn’t find an answer to your problems? / When that time comes, I suggest you stop thinking about it. Not every question has an answer, after all.

• Ha… Your eyes didn’t lie. They’re fixed straight on the future… / No matter what happens, you better not back down. All you gotta do is keep going down the path that you believe in.

• Ha… You’re already a regular here, kid. Still, there’s no need to be so hasty… / Everyone becomes an adult eventually, like it or not.

Weird-ass dreams and the end of Pawn Stars on my DVR

Let's see. In one dream my cousin bought a Vita and he had something like a PhotoFast adapter for his Vita, not unlike how it's used in a PSP with two micro SD cards.

In another dream, I actually was at a grade school reunion, though I got along surprisingly best with somebody who shall rename nameless; he wasn't exactly anywhere near my close circle of friends but he was certainly friendly, we got along, and I even ran into him when I was at PCC. Nothing but respect for the guy and I hope he's doing well.

Lastly, I decided to delete Pawn Stars off the TiVo and delete the episodes that were on the hard drive. Sure, I missed some episodes when transitioning from DirecTV to the Charter box to TiVo, but I made sure to take note of which episodes I missed and tried to look out for them. But I haven't seen the episodes since March or so, and that's because I just really, really don't like Chumlee. Say what you will about the authenticity, but I always liked Old Man and Rick; their expertise and hardballing kept me watching. But when they revamped the intro to include Chumlee, that was the turning point. Just who does enjoy watching such a repulsive character? I remember when they swapped him with Roli (from Counting Cars) for a day, and stuff happened, and at the very end Chumlee was still some lazy ass. I think that was it for me right there. I was proud to say I saw and recorded every single Pawn Stars episode up to that point too. Now the episodes that I didn't yet burn away to my private DVD collection are gone as well.

Words I hate (2014-06-11)

• conversate

The word is "converse," you morons!

Quick update

So yeah, back in late February / early March my family cancelled DirecTV and AT&T (which were decades-long subscriptions) and got Charter cable. The Internet's cheaper and faster and we have more TV channels, so it's a win all-around. But the Charter DVR box completely sucks; the interface is as ugly as sin, the remote was infrared only, and not even all the options were selectable. I was trying to make the HDMI audio output plain old stereo instead of Dolby Digital and I just couldn't do it. I think the available options were "On" and "Auto" and no matter what my brother and I tried, we had to resort to RCA audio like animals.

Having had enough, my brother decided to get TiVo again (last time we had TiVo was around 2003). We got the Roamio and I agreed to shoulder the cost of the DVR box and service. Thanks to careful budgeting on my end, it's not too big of a problem; my brother only wanted 1/4 of the cost of the box, but I'll happily chip in for 1/2 of the box and 1/2 of the service. Of course then my brother got a TiVo Mini and upgraded the harddrive to 1 TB... or 3 TB, I forget. I'm only willing to pay 1/4 of the hard drive.

I must say, the quality of the channels isn't quite as good as DirecTV; it seems lower-priority channels like Lifetime really get hit hard with the compression while HBO is as clear as ever. But I need Lifetime to be clearer because of Hoarders. And sometimes you really can see the compression in sports; when the camera zooms in on a moving player (e.g. after scoring a point), the crowd in the background looks like pixelated vomit.

We noticed an issue where Food Network and Travel Channel weren't displaying the correct shows, but an email to TiVo cleared that up.

My brother went to Japan a few more times. (Why? Who knows.) But he got me Persona 3 Portable (Japanese version, of course), so now I'm more motivated to clear some of my backlog. There are a couple of guides for max social links in a single playthrough, but they're never as clear as they should be. I've found that you need to keep these things in mind:

1. All the Personas you need between dungeon visits for social links (Arcana and the number of Personas)
2. Level up to make sure you can actually carry that many Personas at the same time 
3. The money you need for stat-raising activities 
4. The money you need for summoning and fusing Personas

I'm currently playing Persona 4 Golden and I'm at just about Level 25 where I can finally hold 10 Personas. I think I was underleveled beating the first dungeon, but I didn't have a choice; there was simply no cheap, sustainable way to replenish SP. A large part of these max social link runs is clearing each new dungeon in a single day, so going back some other day was out of the question. I just barely beat the first dungeon at Level 9 or so, when the person I rescued turned out to be Level 15, I believe.

As for eBay adventures... I've been buying all the well-known NES must-have series for about $50 each. Last year I got all Mega Man 1-6 and Ninja Gaiden 1-3, and within these last few months I bought Contra & Super C, Double Dragon 1-3, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1-3. All that's left on my radar is Castlevania 1-3, though those sets tend to go for $60 or $70 for some reason. I do have Castlevania 1 for Wii Virtual Console and the Japanese Castlevania 3 (Akumajou Densetsu)... and I'm not in any rush to get Castlevania 2 thanks to a certain infamous video review. 

I did finally sell something on eBay for the first time ever, though what finally pushed me to sell was an eBay promotional offer. Well, all those promotional offers mysteriously disappeared from my inbox as soon as I sold something, so I ended up paying the listing fees anyway, and I'm certainly not expecting any $25 coupon code. Apparently I'm not alone. Was this how eBay got so big? By baiting and switching? I think eBay owes us all at least $5. 

And that item I sold? That was my double of Mega Man 1, and despite me going out of my way to make the most perfect item listing ever, the buyer still hasn't given me positive feedback yet. I shipped it as quick as possible and he received it in two days. What the hell is he waiting for?

With all this game buying, it looks like the video mods for my Atari 2600 and NES will have to wait a little while longer, especially since I'm probably going to Las Vegas in the summer.

On a positive note, I actually did the NES Max d-pad mod all by myself! I hopped on eBay and bought red Xbox 360 controller parts for a little over $2 from Hong Kong. It took some trial and error with the sandpaper, but the most important thing I found was to make sure there was just a little slack when installing the stick and connecting the black rings. As for which way to connect the rings, make sure the little 5 goes on top of the little 3 (they're a little hard to see), and then hold the controller up (facing down) and look under to make sure the ring pops out evenly in the front of the stick. If one side of the ring sticks out too much and another side too little, just rotate the ring until it's all balanced. 

And the mod works great! A part of me still prefers the plain old original d-pad (muscle memory and all that), but this Max mod turns the controller from a 5/10 usability rating to a 9.5/10. If I ever get over my fear of breaking it I'll raise my rating to a 10/10. But I did clear Mega Man 2 with that mod and the controller worked great. Before I would have to push harder than I'd want to go in a direction; I'd sometimes just stop walking. Now jumping over holes and grabbing on to ladders in Mega Man isn't a problem at all because I'm confident in the diagonals again.