So I have the fucking flu. It’s ruined my day, and might possibly screw up my plans for my long weekend. I booked Monday off so I could get some personal stuff done, but so far I haven’t even done a proper vegetation day. Usually on Saturday I do laundry, play video games and drink some refreshing tea. Mmm… refreshing tea. I should go get some more tea.
Anyway, I’ll have to do that tomorrow, but right now I’m feeling better because I broke down and took a bunch of codeine. Codeine is a cough suppressant, and I may need to go to the store for more of it if I continue to take as much as I have today. It also helps a great deal with my muscle pain. And the soreness and swelling in my throat has gone down enough so that I can speak again. Fuck I hate being sick.
I have managed to do something productive today though. Last year, I bought my dad (through e-bay) a DVD version of the 1982 miniseries “Marco Polo”. I’m not one for television or movies, so I can’t say whether or not it’s any good. It does have Leonard Nimoy in it however. And it also has John Houseman, who played Dr. Franklin.
He plays the Archbishop of Venice. I saw a brief scene with him in this role and expected him to go on a rant about fembots. But he didn’t.
Anyhoo… This DVD came from Taiwan, as I’m guessing the Marco Polo miniseries has never had an official DVD release. The picture looks like it was taken from a TV broadcast. Still, it’s better than the 28-year old VHS copy my dad got from TV. A lot better.
There was a problem, however. The Chinese subtitles available on the DVD were turned on by default and could not be turned off. Turning them off in the DVD menu didn’t work. And my dad can’t watch something with the lower half of the screen filled with Chinese text like that. At least that’s what he said.
So… here’s where a little tech savvy comes in handy. In about an hour, I had used CloneDVD 2 to rip the 3-disc original into 4 iso files that had the chinese subtitles removed. Then it was a matter of using good old ImgBurn to make some DVD+Rs he could play in his DVD player.
And that’s all there is to it. He was very thankful, and amazed that I could do such a thing. I, like MacGyver before me said “Don’t thank me…” and explained in detail what I had done.
Now… This reminds me of something I read today. Another DRM disaster brought to us by the copyright cartels. Aparantly the BluRay version of the recent film Avatar won’t play on many BluRay players, even after a firmware update has been installed.
Digital Restrictions Management does nothing to stop piracy and only punishes legitimate customers. But greed rules the corporate mind, and facts like this can not be seen.
Whatever. I don’t like movies and Avatar looks fucking stupid to me.
(I know it’s not Avatar, but it’s blue.)