Kinda fun HD 720p video of my tiny camera taped onto my 3-year-old nephew’s matchbox-sized train.
The camera weight and size meant it couldn’t go up train hills or tight spaces, so it was a flat track with “elbow room”.
Choo choo!
fun with ford GT in GT5
more silly fun with the playstation. a very hopped up yellow 2006 ford GT with custom wheels and tons of engine mods. the rear wheel drive and crazy power makes sliding around the track a lot of fun…
it’s fun to drink and drive!
I’ve been having fun racing the boyfriend on the PS3 game “Gran Turismo 5″.
Turns out the quite recent and relatively new Nissan GT-R is a totally insane car — 4WD and one of the largest engines Japan has made plus supercharging. With a nice belgian beer and our media room, it makes it a super immersively fun time!
I’ve added a carbon hood, racing rear spoiler, custom wheels, weight reductions, and engine tunings to bring it to something crazy like peak 650 horsepower. Really fun to personalize it a bit! The replays are fun — especially when you do spectacular crashes and jumps. You can customize the pictures from all sorts of different camera angles. Virtual reality, indeed! 
Amazing Summer trip to Bali!
Two week vacation to the glorious island of Bali, summer 2010.
Bali is culturally fascinating — full of very happy and cooperative people unlike any place I’ve seen. Here are some interesting tidbits/observances:
Bali is an amazing isolated place whose people typically lives communally and is based off of the agriculture of rice. Despite being part of Islamic Indonesia, the vast majority (70%+) of the people are Hindu (with a mix of Animism from Bali’s indigenous roots).
We saw everything we could, ate their amazing food, and tried to soak up as much Balinese culture as we could!
You can see more formats and information here.
Sony P-Series running 10.10 Meerkat Ubuntu
Sony P-Series
(specifically: win7 era P788K, 8″ 1600×768 display, 2B RAM, GMA 500 graphics, 64GB SSD)
I got this supercute mini-laptop last year
I had been using Ubuntu linux Lucid (10.4) and just upped to Meerkat (10.10). (Both were Netbook Edition).
I’d never gotten video acceleration to work before and was stuck w/ ~1-5 fps video most of the time.
Doing the widely suggested:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/ppa && sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/fix && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install poulsbo-driver-2d poulsbo-driver-3d poulsbo-config
bricked my vaio 8-( well, i mean, it gave me root login w/o X/windows ability but… 8-p)
but 2-3 apt-get remove, reinstalls, hunting google later, found the apparent saviour (I did 1000mb from 2000mb recommended here):
sudo nano /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash mem=1000mb acpi_osi=Linux"
sudo update-grub
booted clean! *immediately* got ability to use proprietary vaio accessory to output VGA to external monitor (a first!) and brightness up/down hotkeys working. (brightness to work even at all!)
but best of all, video and appearance *and everything* (moving windows, starting applications) was *so much faster* visually!
cmd-line video playback with:
sudo apt-get remove mplayer
sudo apt-get install gnome-mplayer gecko-mediaplayer
so this is *all* i have done, aside from starting w/ vanilla install (with just a few changes to help w/ SSD instead of HD) of lucid upgraded to meerkat.
(personally, i’m still working on getting suspend/resume to work (seems to work but the display doesn’t come back on — been like this the whole time) and to get hibernate to work — prolly will go with some kinda memory stick to dump to)
UPDATE!
suspend/resume working now with change to suggested “gma500 fix”
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/ppa && sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/fix && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install poulsbo-driver-2d poulsbo-driver-3d poulsbo-config
I think this additional suggestion may have fixed sleep/resume (but it’s possible it was just the gma500/fix related packages in live above:
sudo mv /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video /usr/lib/pm-utils/99video
Marine layer in bay area
From the airplane of a July trip. We sailed through a thickly overcast morning only to reveal this perfect white cottonball carpet flat layer topped with hidden brilliant buttery vitamin D sunshine!
Another great indie film
Hunter and I really really liked this film shown on PBS this week. It nicely wanders in its storytelling and is really thoughtfullly done. John Adams (I think) said his best piece of lawyer-ing was defending the British in Boston after the Boston Massacre. The military officer who defended the Gitmo detainee here is a true American hero. “The Oath”
Great Frontline program — The Wounded Platoon
I just listened to this as a podcast and then watched the video online after that. It’s a really interesting slice and view into the Iraq war — where they just focus on one specific platoon. ”Wounded” refers more to the psychological rather than physical wounds — although the latter relates to the former…
The original materials, background, and discussion can be seen here.
The 7 chapter program can be seen in its entirety here:
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Kitty shot
Cutest teddy bear kitty helps me with laundry.
Updated Site!
Woohoo!
So after over a year of owning this site w/ little more than 10 posts and pages geared towards AIDS LifeCycle fundraising and training, I’ve finally merged my personal site into this site and updated it. So now this is the
New home of Tracey Jaquith and Dumb Bunny Productions.
I’ve got new a new navigation layout and structure, updated CSS and style, and about 20 main info pages added. I’ll be tweaking it a bit, but the biggest changeover is now live! This site aims to blend blogging with a more traditional website.
Star Wars re-remastered to high quality 1977 version!
So I wanted to sit down in my updated home theatre and watch one of my favorite films, “Star Wars”. Problem is, I have two versions on DVD, and neither are ideal. The 2004 DVD version has remastered audio and video, but also added scenes and changes I really don’t like. The 1977 DVD version is a poor quality transfer and encoding.
So I combined the 1977 and 2004 DVDs into the highest quality 1977 version of the film! I show all my scripts and techniques here, too, so you can make the same version from your two DVDs, too!
http://www.archive.org/details/reremaster
star wars comparison of two films
ffmpeg for time-lapse, sets of images, and even *archiving*!
I now use the FFMPEG package compiled locally on my Mac Leopard laptop.
If you want to take a bunch of JPEG images, you can turn them into a “motion JPEG” AVI video file (which is ideal for time-lapse). What’s neat about ffmpeg, is you can turn a directory of JPEGs into an AVI and later recreate the JPEGs from the AVI.
Thus, I can take 100-1000 JPEG images from a “shoot” and create a video time-lapse of all the JPEG images in a given subdir in a command-line shell (terminal):
ffmpeg -r 6 -i "%04d.jpg" -an -vcodec copy out.avi
Even cooler, you can go directly back to *the same JPEG* images like so (this is where you can see it is a lossless conversion from JPEGs to Motion JPEG and back):
ffmpeg -i out.avi -vcodec copy "%04d.jpg"
“-r 6″ is the framerate, ie: “make the video play 6 JPEG images per second”.
It doesn’t get much nicer than that! Not to mention, the encoding is FAST! I recently moved from mencoder/mplayer to ffmpeg since you can specify a complete copy of the input JPEGs (lossless from the source) as well as compress them down a bit (as you like).
For the lossless conversion, the (not entirely obvious) *key* to success is to use the “-vcodec copy” *after* the source file(s).
You can get this running on Windows with Cygwin, Mac with terminal, and any linux distribution like Ubuntu.
THANK YOU DONORS!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
donors to my AIDS LifeCycle8 bikeride!
I took about 500 photos myself during the seven days of riding. Hunter also took about that many photos, too. I will make a combined album soon and edit a video as well and put links to them on this site.
However, for now, you can see ~100 of my best photos on my public albums here:
Finished the ride!
Well, Hunter and I made it home safe and sound last night!
We finished just before the course formally closed, yesterday (saturday) around 3pm.
(A lot of us were late due to two accident-caused road closure/delays and then Hunter and I decided to sneak off course a block to reward ourselves with Peets mocha freddos just before riding in. We flew from LAX to SFO and then BART-ed and were home just after midnight. Was sooo nice to see the kitties again and get things airing out!
Some interesting summary thoughts:
- Day 6 got entirely cancelled and we had to be bussed from camp to camp. We originally thought it was due to the uphill and downhill being deemed “too dangerous” in the rain by the CHP, but it was actually because that pass got closed temporarily due to rain related accidents and only ~250 riders (~10%) made it out on the rainy road before the “hold”. We had a 3 hour permit to cone off a single lane of route 101/1 on this narrow “no shoulder” bridge, and by the time the pass was reopened, not all the riders were likely to make it through the pass. CHP didn’t want to extend the times so they asked us to cancel that day. *First time* that has happened in 16 years of LifeCycle / AIDSRide ! Of course, the irony is that the rains stopped early in the morning by about 8am, and Hunter and I (and the riders who have similar pace — at least 50% of the riders) could have easily made that road closure for a really wonderfully beautiful perfect biking weather day.
- Although the weather was a bit ominous at times, we only got about three 5-10 minute very light sprinkles of rain while biking or in the nonsleeping hours of camp. It did rain one morning pretty good — causing a lot of tents to flood. We prepared a bit better with a tarp under our tent (and had a thick air mattress) so we didn’t get tooo wet.
- I was slightly crabby or something Day1 (due to lack of sleep and foggy wet start) but every day pretty much got *more* beautiful and better as it went on. If fact, I loved every day but day6 (which wasn’t awful — just disappointing that the route got cancelled.)
- This year the biggest difference was the fact that while last year was hot and dry nearly every single day, this ride was a slight bit cool (though nicely never cold at all) and *very* humid (comparatively) every day. Strange this time of year!
- Day 5 was a big change of course this year. Last year was a total cakewalk (or “champagne ride” as the pros sometime call last day of Tour de France ) at only 43 miles and limited hills (w/ so so scenery). This year was a noteably tougher nearly 70 miles where the ride to lunch was *jaw droppingly* gorgeous (riding wine country a al the movie “Sideways” into Solvang for the first time in ALC history) and fantastic. However, after lunch was quite challenging where we headed directly westward for Lompoc — which meant the picking up strong wind was all headwind on flats and downhills and we were working hard on a *lot* of uphills. So there was “no recovery” period from lunch to camp.
Overall, once again an utterly fantastic ride!
We knew so many people this year it was like a rolling party of socializing and eating (well with determined-to-finish work on the bike in between 
). It’s soooo nice to have found this wonderful community of people who care for others and everyone in the Ride. I’ve been thinking it’s a lot like the communities people find in churches (having grown up Methodist but now non-religious).
Rain delay at start day6
Well we are all waiting to roll after CA Highway Patrol
Shut down the course due to early rain.
Not sure if we’ll get cleared to ride
Was an early accident on only
big downhill of the day.
Rumor is now day may be cancelled
and will have to bus 2000+ riders
and bikes. We will see…
Starting Day 6!
So far so good.
We made it safe and dry until now.
Today started light rain with wet tent.
It’s let up over breakfast mostly
so we are hoping hoping for a break
Today and crossing our fingers
Today’s highlights are Santa Barbara,
Hopefully dolphin coastal sightings,
And an ice cream stop — it’s
Normally super hot today!
Yesterday’s day 5 “red dress day” was
A blast even though it was a bit of a
Hard finish with hills and headwinds
Thanks all for your support, interest,
And comments!
Halfway through AIDS LifeCycle
We finished day three’s ride today. I an feeling very strong still and enjoying the unbelievably pretty inland agricultural “salad bowl” of CA and then the dryer wide open grasslands too. The weather has been quite good – not too hot and not too cool. The colder mornings are offset by the rather unseasonly humidity
Hunter is doing well too. Each day seems to get more social and more fun. We know and keep meeting more wonderful people
What a fantastic event!
It’s OK to be a TRL (video)
Hunter and Tracey finish up their season of being
Training Ride Leaders
and share a little of what they’ve learned
tracey bike accident — walks away scraped but OK
tracey bike accident -- walks away scraped but OK
ouchie!
A steel cruiser bike roared blindly out of a blind drive and ran into me. The impact “taco-ed” (crumpled) my wheel and pitched me over the handle bars and the 2nd bike. I hit the pavement, but managed to not break anything or hit my head. I scraped up my fingers, tore up 4 fingernails, and scraped my elbow and knee. Later we’d learn it was all surface stuff and only my front wheel needed replacing. Amazingly lucky to have had so little damage!
I was prolly doing 10-15 mph; other rider maybe 7-10. All of this happened right in front of Hunter’s horrified eyes!
Breakfast with Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now!”
Amy Goodman, Tracey, the Kahles
Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, is on tour this month across the country. She visited San Francisco for two days this week. My boss, Brewster Kahle from Internet Archive, knew that I am a raving fan of Amy and her amazing show of independent journalism. He was kind enough to invite me along to a long breakfast discussion with Amy.
Brewster and Amy found a common interest on issues of the potential monopoly of Google books, so she scheduled a followup discussion the next day with Brewster on Amy’s show “Democracy Now!” (for likely broadcasting Apr20-25). In person, Amy is an incredibly sweet and inquisitive individual. She is brilliant as well as thoughtful, generous and full of grace. I was thrilled to meet her in person and see how a part of her day goes. I look up to her tremendously as an award-winning pioneer in the field of journalism.
Oh this made me sooo happy! 8-)