Tag Archives: software

Visual Studio 2008

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Earlier this week I received a free copy of Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2008 by being an Action Pack subscriber and completing a short little web tutorial and quiz. I installed it last night and decided to get the Chef code/projects converted so I could start using it.

The usual project conversion wizard popped up as soon as I opened the solution and prompted me to upgrade it to the new VS08 format (still targeting .NET 2.0 though).  When the wizard completed, however, I was getting a few compile errors in some of the WinForms designer files (.designer.cs).  It was easy enough to fix, the conversion just messed up namespaces during process, which surprised me a little bit.

I haven’t spent much time actually developing in 08 yet, but now that I have Chef converted I’m going to stop using 2005 in favor of it.  I’ll report any cool new features I run into.

Video Processing

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My video camera was delivered Friday, so this weekend I have spent some time learning out how to use it and, more importantly, how to process/edit its video. Learning how to use it was pretty easy, aside from a little disc snafu that kept me from making use of a pack of DVD+RWs I bought. Everyone – it’s important to make note of the “+” or “-” in the DVD-RW or DVD+RW. I used to know this, but have taken for granted that nowadays it usually doesn’t matter since devices typically handle both formats. It matters on the Canon DC50 – must used DVD-RW.

Getting that out of the way, using the camera is very straightforward. 20 minutes of high quality (widescreen) video will fit onto a miniDVD. While that doesn’t sound like a whole lot at first, when you’re taking short clips most of the time 20 minutes does go far.

After my first disc of video it came time to edit it and burn a DVD. Since I’m a big fan of Adobe’s Lightroom for photo editing I decided to turn to Adobe Premiere Elements for handling the video. It has come highly recommended so I didn’t even give it much thought.

It sucked. For some reason it didn’t interpret the widescreen video correctly; that took a couple (few?) hours to figure out. Then it continually locked up and/or crashed on Windows Vista – even though it’s supposed to work just fine. There were many times when I would go 10-15 mouse clicks in a row, with each one causing Premiere to “not respond” for 30+ seconds apiece. I did my best to ignore these issues, figuring that as long as I’d get a dvd at the end I would be happy. Well, I got a DVD alright – one with the audio and video out of sync by about 1-2 seconds. I eventually tracked that down to an import problem caused by who knows what. As soon as I’d import the video it would be out of sync. I’d rather not have my home videos look like they were dubbed in a Japan.

After fighting Premiere for a long time I decided it was time to try something else. So I turned to ULead DVD MovieFactory. The responsiveness was much better than Premiere Elements, the audio and video were in sync, and it’s cheaper. I just about ready to buy it when I actually tried burning a DVD I created and continued to get nothing but “Unspecified Error”. Over and over.

ULead sells another video editing product called VideoStudio, so I gave it a shot too. The UI was very similar to MovieFactory and was just as responsive. I was able to import video, edit it, and create the final DVD without a single crash. I think that’s what I’ll be buying.

Next I need to figure out how to handle all of this new video data. I’ve got stuff setup for my photos, but these are a different beast. And just like my photos, I want to have them 30+ years from now. More on that later.

Dey-tuh

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I just read David‘s post on the usage of the word code in the context of software and have to add that, to someone in the field, hearing that usage is akin to fingernails on a chalkboard.

This got me thinking about one of my biggest pet peaves in the computer world.  I know that I’m  not right on this and they aren’t wrong, but it still annoys the hell out of me.  What is it, you ask?   Nothing other than the pronunciation of the word Data.  In my mind (zip it..) it’s pronounced [Dey-tuh].  Not [Dat-uh].  It’s [Dey-tuh base], not [Dat-uh base].

Seriously, I’ll be having a conversation with someone and they’ll mention their Dat-uhbase and it takes all I can muster to not make a face like I just ate a lemon.  I can understand if these people were British and said it with a cool accent.  But no, they’re just plain-ol’ Americans like myself.  Dey-tuh people.  Not Dat-uh.  Please.

I recall when Ana came home from her new, at the time, job at a local mortgage company.  She was describing her day, and the let the Dat-uh word slip.  It stopped me in my tracks, caused me to interrupt her quite rudely, and show now makes sure to call it Dey-tuh whenever I’m within earshot.  She uses Dey-tuh from a Dey-tuh base.