After I’ve gotten an Ipod Video I have the possibility of taking video with me when I go, but often this is hindered by the video only being available as a stream. Using Linux there is an easy 2-step way around this. The only requirements are that mplayer and ffmpeg is installed. Even though I have not tried it on anything but wmv’s, but I guess it is a very robust method (depending on the number of codecs’s installed). Step 1: grabbing the video
Grab the video from the source: I’ve found mplayer’s command line does this very well.
Step 2: Convert the file to an Ipod-friendly format
I read somewhere (and I can’t find it again) that mencoder was not appropriate because of some technicality concerning their header. One should therefore use ffmpeg when converting to the Ipod.
I find this commandl ine to work okay as long as the source is not in widescreen format (16:9), if it is the aspect will be wrong. Then you might want to try out this one.
I found the last piece of command line at this here, which is a great source for further information on video to the Ipod.
Now the video should be ready for the Ipod, just sync it to the Ipod with your favourite tool for that.
On problem which often occurs is that the mms address is hard to get knowledge of. This can many times be retrieved by right clicking in a playback of stream, in firefox with the mplayer-plugin installed, and select “copy url”. A more complicated way is using ethereal network analyzer.
Even though this is a guide for Linux I would think that Windows this would work in Windows with cygwin and ffmpeg and mplayer installed.
One last question is about the legality in this - but that must be depending on the publisher on the stream and so on.
When travelling digital copies of important documents can come in handy
When going on my last travel, I realized have many documents I had to bring and how vulnerable I was to losing these documents, this being passport, plain-tickets, hotel-vouchers, insurance and so on. In order to accommodate this vulnerability I scanned the most important documents saved them to PDF a brought them with on a USB-storage. This storage was kept separate from the documents in order to reduce the risk of losing both, and it was encrypted so that the sensible information keept on it would not be accessible to others in case it was stolen.
Scanning the documents
In order to get a digital copy you need access to a scanner (surprise!). Watch out that you don’t scan the documents in to good quality (I use 300dpi, 256 Gray tones). After scanning the documents I would save them in PDF-format since in PDF since it is very versatile while still keeping the print-out an exact black & white copy.
If your scanner software does not support export to PDF this can be accomplished by installing pdf995, which appears as a printer in windows, but in fact saves your print out as a PDF. In other words it should be possible to get an exact copy in most internet cafés Storing the documents
In order to keep the documents accessible one can either keep them on a USB device or online.
If you decide to keep the documents on a USB device they will be safer if encrypted. Travelling-forever has made a small guide on how to encrypt part og a USB device The USB device be either external an hard drive, a small flash USB stick or an mp3 player like Apples Ipod (it can likely be a burned cd-rom too - but I have not checked to se how truecrypt reacts to not being able to write).
The other way to go is to keep the documents at an online service you trust (and save the encryption). I one has not access to a ftp server this could be accomplished by signing up at Box.net, sending all the documents to the Gmail account or any other online way where you trust the documents are safe while still being accessible.
A network drive integrated in Windows can be a very usefull alternative to USB keys.
Box.net have for some time been offering 1 gb of free space (files size max. 10 mb) on the net. They have a very nice web-interface, but with Asen Kovachev’s tutorial it is very easy to have the one gb almost completely integrated in Windows without installing software.
