Well, for the longest time, they didn't tell me what they expected of me at work. For the past few weeks, it's gotten better in that regard.

But, you know what they say about too much of a good thing?

Yep. I'm now very overburdened. I don't know how I'm going to dig out from all the expectations. Actually, I do know. I'm going to do it with hard work, dedication and devotion.

So, if you don't hear from me for a bit, that's probably why. Either that, or I've died at my desk. ("No silicon heaven? Where would all the calculators go?")

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On an utterly unrelated note, I need to figure out how to post pictures on this blog. (Netta! Help, I need you!) I have an origami sculpture that's approximately 6" across (that's around 15cm for you metric folk) that's an 'EPCOT ball.' The damned thing took 1200 sheets of 2" squares. It weighs a little over half a pound (233 grams) and it can support a phone book.

I want to show pictures of it. It looks neat.

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On another utterly unrelated note, I like Unix. (Yes, Unix, the emasculated operating system. You have to say it out loud to get it... Oh, never mind, a joke's no fun if I have to explain it.) Here's the thought-trail:

I had a bunch of .FLV (Flash Video) files I snarfed off YouTube via http://keepvid.com (Yay for KeepVid!) and wanted to play them on my Toshiba GigaBeat portable, but it only groks WMV.

Enter Easy FFmpeg, a video format conversion tool that, unlike the name would indicate, is not that easy to use. Well, that's unfair, because to convert video formats is not easy to do, and this program makes it drop-dead simple.

You just type ffmpeg -i file.flv file.wmv and it does the rest. Seriously, that is one majorly cool piece of coding. My hat is off to the authors.

Supposedly, per this page, the reason it's so hard to use is because, if it were any easier, people would use it a lot more and then the big, nasty corporations will clamp down on it.

I don't know. And, truth be told, I don't think it's that hard to use. You just add the subdirectory to your %PATH%, then type ffmpeg -i file.flv file.wmv. The only problem is... I have twenty-some-odd files I want to convert.

I could type them in, one at a time. Or I could write a .BAT script to do it. Or I could write a .WSF (Windows Script File) to do it.

Or I can do it in a way befitting the existing user interface.

I have an install of CygWin on my computer as well. There are times when Windows just won't do. This is one of those times. I fired up RVXT, got to my beloved bash prompt, then typed the following command:

for file in *.flv; do cmd="ffmpeg -i \"$file\" \"${file%flv}wmv\""; echo $cmd; eval $cmd; done

A few minutes later, all my .FLV files are converted to .WMVs.

I love Unix.