Woodpress

A friend shared this amazing macro photo of a bug. I’m not going to embed the image here without permission, so it’s up to you to click the link.

Yesterday I took my waterproof camera into the bathtub, testing its waterproofness for the first time. It worked out just fine.

My five year old daughter asked if I was thinking of a horse when I made this splash, because it looks like a horse:

Here’s video of my throat four hours after my tonsillectomy:

And 8 days after:

I had my tonsillectomy on January 8. Everything went according to plan (as far as I know).

Here’s a post-op photo (after the nurse cleaned the blood off my face — apparently I was crying blood, which would’ve been interesting to see).

I also had my septum undeviated (I don’t remember offhand what that procedure is called), which is why my nose is so swollen.

I had a really obnoxious post-op nurse who wouldn’t get me water, wouldn’t help me sit up, etc. She was hostile and uncooperative, and didn’t listen to what I was saying. I was happy to get out of the surgical center.

Recovering at home has been uneventful. I have to periodically squirt saline solution through my nose, which is unpleasant but not painful. I haven’t been able to get much work done because of drowsiness.

I’m sleeping a lot, and I have a hard time keeping my mouth from drying out since I can’t breathe through my swollen nose.

I’m mostly eating jello and popsicles, and drinking ice water. I’m looking forward to eating actual food again.

I took some video of the back of my throat after I got home from the surgery, but I haven’t copied it to the computer yet.

Tomorrow morning I will be having my tonsils removed. Prior to that happening, I decided to take a little video of them. If you’re not interested in seeing the back of my throat and reading details (but really, who isn’t??), you might want to skip this.

In the tonsil on the left (my right tonsil), there is a visible tonsilolith (a white lump). Tonsiloliths are a chronic problem I have, and results in recurring infections. This is the primary reason I am having my tonsils removed.

The Wikipedia article on Banqi is fraught with controversy (documenting many variants of the game and different translations of piece names), so I’ve written my own brief page about Banqi. My page includes instructions for the variant I play with my friends, as well as the current version of my custom board (which I intend to always publish there).

For convenience (and because images are prettier than words), here is version 6 of my custom Banqi board:

I recently bought a JVC GZ-MG255U camcorder with an internal hard drive. It’s almost everything I’d hoped it would be. The size, weight, features, video quality, etc. are all satisfactory. The macro capability is fantastic, and makes me yearn for insect-infested summertime.

It comes with bundled software, which I’m sure provides some sort of Nerf interface to the video files… but I’m not really interested in being locked in to bundled software that only runs on Windows. I haven’t even installed it (although it’s possible I will, so I can see how it manages the files).

So far I haven’t found documentation on the directory structures and file formats, but here’s what I’ve figured out:

For a given “program” (a collection of video files), there are three file types; MOD, MOI, and PGI.

MOD and MOI (MOvie Data and MOvie Information?) files come in sequentially named pairs (MOVxxx.MOD and MOVxxx.MOI, where xxx is a three digit hexadecimal number starting with 001). Each pair apparently corresponds to a single video segment (the time between starting recording, and stopping). I haven’t tested whether a sufficiently large segment will span MOD/MOI pairs.

MOD files contain MPEG2 video with AC3 audio. DVDs use MPEG2, and AC3 is among the supported formats for DVDs, so MOD files are extremely DVD-ready. (Unfortunately AC3 is heavily encumbered by strongly enforced patents, which creates some problems for me.) From my limited testing (I’ve tried mencoder, mplayer, Media Player Classic, and Windows Media Player), any program that can read MPEG2 files can read the MOD files, although less clever programs (like Windows Media Player) actually require that the file be renamed from MOD to MPG.

MOI files are a tiny fraction of the size of their MOD counterparts, but there does seem to be a loose correlation in relative size. MOI files do not contain essential video or audio information, but they may contain interesting and valuable movie metadata. In searching the web, I’ve found at least one claim that MOI files contain “timestamp” information.

Each “program” has a single PGI (ProGram Information?) file.

I have spent almost no time digging through the PGI and MOI files so far, but I’m preserving the files for now because they’re small and might contain information I can use.

I took this picture on my recent afternoon walk from which I’ve posted other pictures. Today a co-worker said that the company wants to publish photos of the different offices, so I volunteered this picture. I edited this version slightly though.