MT-Cumulus is a Flash-based tag cloud for Movable Type. It is written as a plugin for MT 4.x and is a direct port of Roy Tanck's popular Wordpress plugin.

For an overview, usage, screenshots or to download the plugin, head on over to the MT-Cumulus project page.

The Projects page on my site has been under 'development' for quite some time now. Actually, it was more neglected than 'under development'. Well, I'm pleased to announce that it IS actually under development and nearing completion. Several projects are listed with overviews and screenshots of each, and as always, if you have a project that you feel I might be interested in, please contact me.

On July 2nd, 2008, I was interviewed by Karen Greenwood Henke from Nimble Press about the future of Video on Demand in public education. The interview took place at the National Educational Computing Conference in San Antonio, Texas. Here's a link to the article which is posted on the Long Tail Learners Blog.

One of my many frustrations with Windows has been that over time, the entire operating system slows down considerably. This is possibly due to user profiles, or registry and file-system fragmentation. Whatever the case, it's quite sad that on an older system, the old adage about going to grab a cup of coffee while the system loads still holds true. This complaint has been going on for over a decade, yet it still exists. (sidenote: btw, this is one of the many reasons why I no longer run Windows, leaving the dark side completely.)

But I'm not here to bash Microsoft, or any other OS manufacture for that matter. Maybe there's a completely legitimate reason why systems slow down, although I've never experienced this with OS X or Linux. What I do know is that in the early 80's my Commodore 64 would turn on and it would be ready, just waiting for me to type in code into its Basic interpreter. Why did this happen? Let's see, no moving parts (i.e.: hard drives), smaller operating system, OS loaded in ROM, the list goes on.

So what if we could have a similar user experience (minus the Basic interpreter thing) today? I think it's possible but it would require the participation of both hardware and software vendors to agree on a spec. What spec? I'll tell you... A three stage flash memory spec.

Three Stage Memory

First off, let me express that i'm not an engineer, nor am I up-to-date on any of the latest memory advances. But what i do know is that the current way of doing things whether it's booting from a hard disk or a SSD, isn't working. Essentially what currently happens is that the operating system, applications and preferences are stored on medium and read into RAM where the processor fetches the instructions and executes them. Every time you turn on your computer the same thing happens, even if nothing has changed. This seems rather silly to me.

The Three Stage or TSM contains three separate flash memory banks, Base, Preferred, and Running.

Base-Stage Memory

The contents of this memory is written by the computer manufacture and contains the operating system in a running state and drivers for the hardware that shipped with the system. The content of this memory does not change and is similar to ROM.

Preferred-Stage Memory

This memory is reserved for the preferred state of the machine upon boot. This will be the delta of the Base-Stage Memory. That is, whatever has changed since the Base-Stage will be stored on the Preferred-Stage. This stage can be changed by the end user by a hardware selection located near the power and reset buttons on the front of the computer. By pressing the button, a user creates a new Preferred-Stage Memory configuration. The next time the user boots their machine, it will load to this new state. If the state ever becomes corrupted, the Base-Stage will take precedence. In this regard, the computer will always have an OS and drivers available to it.

Running-Stage Memory

This is the equivalent of today's RAM. This memory is ever changing but is not involved in the bootup sequence at all. If the computer gets infected by malware or viruses, it only affects the Running-Stage Memory. The next time the computer boots, the Running-Stage Memory is erased and the contents of Base and Preferred are loaded.

Bootup Sequence

After POST the BIOS would load the contents of Base-Stage Memory. This is a running operating system and drivers for the hardware that shipped with the system. This is a nearly instantaneous process, after which the Preferred-Stage Memory is loaded. Again, this is nearly instantaneous. At this point, a running operating system, drivers, and preferences have been loaded. Whatever changes have occurred since the load of the Preferred-Stage is loaded by the Running-Stage. Launching applications, etc, take place in this memory space.

Changes Required

This type of architecture has so many advantages in both security, reliability and in enhancing the user experience. But it's not something that could be pulled off overnight. Hardware specs would need to be created with the help and support of the OS manufactures. Changes to the OS would be required including storing preferences, removing the need for journals, etc.

What Do You Think?

Are there any systems out there that implement this type of approach? Has this design been thought of before? I don't know. But it seems to me that this approach is far better than what we have now.

Handbrake is a fantastic application for converting standard definition DVD's to another format. In my case, I use it to encode to AppleTV (H.264/AAC/AC3). I've followed the development of Handbrake for some time now, but until recently, it's been too buggy or incomplete for me to use. That all changed when version 0.9.2 was released.

Using Handbrake, I can decrypt, rip and convert to MPEG-4 in one simple step. One of my test videos for encoding applications has been the TV series Roswell, which aired on both the WB and Fox network about eight years ago. One of the reasons I use this as a test is that the content was originally shot on film (23.976 fps) and was telecined resulting in 29.97 frames per second. The shows typically loose cadence quite frequently resulting in a good test for IVTC filters. There are always a lot of both horizontal and vertical movement as well as dark (or black) scenes which can be quite difficult for the encoder to process.

After many tests, I'm posting what I feel like are my ultimate settings. Some people use handbrake to make smaller, transportable files. Others use it for conversion to mobile devices. I use it with the intention of playing back an exact (or very close representative) copy of my DVD's on my Apple TV device. The only things I cared about when creating these presets were:

• The content was standards-based MP4 (H.264, AAC)
• Able to play back on Apple TV
• Introduced little or no visual artifacts
  
• Provided a Dolby Digital/5.1 surround track

Currently Handbrake does not have a method to import or export presents. So for the time being, you'll have to locate the UserPresets file (~/Library/Application Support/HandBrake/UserPresets.plist on a Mac) and add the contents of the download after the last </dict> in the file. You can download my custom preset here.

August 24th, 2008 - This blog entry is outdated. Please visit the MT-Cumulus project page for a proper Movable Type 4.x plugin of this very popular Flash-based tag cloud. View the MT-Cumulus 1.0 announcement.

No doubt, the availability of plugins for Movable Type is few and far between. After searching for a Flash-based tag cloud for Movable Type 4 and finding no results, I finally gave up. Instead, I focused my energy on finding a similar plugin for WordPress and adapting the implementation for use with Movable Type. The result is WP-Cumulus developed by Roy Tanck which is now successfully running in MT.

Being new to MT, I did not know how to create a plugin, so I opted for the implementation instead. For those of you interested in using this excellent plugin on your MT blog, create a dedicated widget and call it say 'Tag Cloud - Flash'. Then in your layout, include this widget. The only file you'll need from the plugin, is the actual swf file. The rest of the files are WordPress specific and you can discard them.

Here's my code for 'Tag Cloud - Flash'

<div class="widget-tag-cloud widget">
  <h3 class="widget-header">Tag Cloud</h3>
  <div id="tagcloudflash"></div>

  <script type="text/javascript">	 
    var tags = "<tags>";
    <mt:Tags limit="30" sort_by="rank">
    <mt:If tag="TagRank" eq="1"><mt:SetVar name="font" value="18pt" /></mt:If>
    <mt:If tag="TagRank" eq="2"><mt:SetVar name="font" value="16pt" /></mt:If>
    <mt:If tag="TagRank" eq="3"><mt:SetVar name="font" value="14pt" /></mt:If>
    <mt:If tag="TagRank" eq="4"><mt:SetVar name="font" value="12pt" /></mt:If>
    <mt:If tag="TagRank" eq="5"><mt:SetVar name="font" value="10pt" /></mt:If>
    <mt:If tag="TagRank" eq="6"><mt:SetVar name="font" value="8pt" /></mt:If>
    tags += "%3Ca+href%3D%27<$mt:TagSearchLink$>%27+class%3D%27tag-link-66%27+title%3D%27<$mt:TagName$>%27+rel%3D%27tag%27+style=%27font-size:+<mt:Var name="font"/>%3B%27%3E<$mt:TagName$>%3C%2Fa%3E%0A";
    </mt:Tags>  
    tags = tags.replace(/\?/g, "%3F");
    tags = tags.replace(/&amp;/g, "%26");
    tags += "</tags>";

    var so = new SWFObject("/scripts/tagcloud.swf", "tagcloudflash", "365", "365", "7", "#292929");
    so.addVariable("tcolor", "0xEBAF00");
    so.addVariable("tagcloud", tags);
    so.write("tagcloudflash");
  </script>

</div>

Alternatively, you can download my Tag Cloud Widget here.
A special thank you goes out to Roy Tanck for his work on this project.

WordPress filled a huge gap in the marketplace when Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type, decided to screw with their licensing. At the time, Movable Type was numero uno in the blogesphere. Researching articles with the keywords 'migrate', 'wordpress', 'movable type' returns thousands of results of people switching from WordPress to Movable Type, but very few results the other way around.

As of late, WordPress has been annoying the hell out of me. Ever since the 'upgrade' to version 2.3, I've had nothing but issues with WordPress. My number one complaint was my theme was magically possessed. On blog entries, it would sometimes show the correct number of comments, sometimes not. Navigating to the entry page would show the comments, and still the number of comments would be wrong. Perhaps this was a 'feature' of version 2.3. In any case, it was quite annoying and caused me to reevaluate my blogging software.

Another issue I had was with WP-Cache. WordPress in a shared hosting environment such as mine, is quite slow. WP-Cache sped things up a bit, but only marginally. Perhaps it would of done a better job if my site was getting hit all the time - but it wasn't.

I evaluated Expression Engine and Movable Type 4. I decided to go with Movable Type because Six Apart has since changed their licensing and have made available a free version for personal use as well as an open source version. All of which are compatible with their larger commercial offering.

Being somewhat shallow, one of the major selling points for me was the interface. Movable Type is pretty, it's sexy and it's completely functional. Think of it as a Lamborghini that's as easy to drive as a Honda.

The decision of ditching WordPress in favor of Movable Type was taken very seriously. I knew in advance that the plugin support, availability of themes, etc was far superior in the land of WordPress and almost desert-like for Movable Type. Even with these obstacles, I chose my migration path.

The actual migration was quite painless. Movable Type was able to import all of my uploads, entries and comments. The only thing I had to do was figure out the templating system. At first, it made absolutely no sense at all. After a few hours of experimentation, I found it to be quite logical. It was just very different from WordPress, so my learning curve was a bit steeper.

So for all of you celebrating the release of WordPress 2.5, I'm happy for you. May it work better for you than it did for me.

Yesterday, Japan's NHK reported that Toshiba will stop manufacturing HD-DVD equiptment. This comes in light of the recent announcemets during CES by Warner Studios and by the more recent accountments of Netflix, Blockbuster and Wal-Mart to stock only Blu-ray players and titles going forward.

Alas, consumers finally have an easy choice for a physical media format; standard definition or high definition.

But does it really matter? Did Sony win the battle and lose the war?

The proliferation of online movie rental services like XBox Live, iTunes and Netflix allow consumers near instant gratification with the ability to rent both standard-def and high-def content on-demand. Not only does the Blu-ray camp have to compete with these new delivery models, they also have to compete with file sharing networks where users are able to download high-def content for free.

At a time when consumer buy-in is a priority for Sony, the electronics giant faces an uphill battle trying to convince consumers that physical media formats are still relevant.

In the era of YouTube and sub $1000 pro-sumer cameras, the need for video encoding tools is ever increasing. By in-large, the demand for such tools is no longer a job for the professional. Today, literally hundreds of encoding tools exist. Googling "Video Encoding Tools" yields just under 45,000 results. So how do you know which tool to use?

Today, I'm reviewing a product from Elecard, a little known Russian company. The product, Converter Studio 2.0, is the latest version of their not-so-popular-but-should-be encoding tool.

Converter Studio comes in four flavors depending on the features required.

• Converter Studio (consumer product)
• Converter Studio AVC HD Edition (consumer product)
• Converter Studio Pro (professional standard-definition product)
• Converter Studio ProHD (professional high-definition product)

Most consumers, amateurs and semi-pro encoders will find the features in the first product (Converter Studio) to their liking. My first complaint however is in the names. I wish software companies would standardize on a max of 2-3 versions of a single product. For example, Converter Studio actually has more features, including HD, than the AVC HD edition. The differences in the Professional product offerings is quite obvious; high-def vs. standard-def.

The Interface

Elecard has re-written the entire UI from scratch. This is a huge improvement from the previous 1.2 product. The interface is clean, well-organized and very intuitive. Elecard has done a good job creating an interface that is equally usable by professionals and beginners. It's Apple-ish styled interface reminds me of Final Cut Studio and Apple Compressor, but far simpler.

The Preview Window

As you would expect, the preview window displays the contents of the original source material being encoded. One of the things that I've always liked about the QuickTime player is that you can use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard to advance the video frame by frame. So I was thrilled when I tried this in Converter Studio and it worked.

Profiles

Converter Studio comes with an assortment of pre-defined profiles for common applications and devices including Blu-ray Disk, DVD, Sony PSP and Apple iPod. Users can also create their own profiles either from scratch or by using one of the included profiles as a template. Unlike most encoding applications, users cannot overwrite or delete predefined profiles. This is a great feature for the beginner who is just starting to learn the interface. Creating profiles is just as impressive. The enhanced Profiles window shows all available profiles and a high-level overview of what specs make up the profile. This not only is an improvement over previous versions, but surpasses the usability of some of the more known encoding applications like Sorenson Squeeze. Likewise, the Task Parameters window shows all of the details about the current profile as well as the content being encoded.

 

The Main (Concept) Attraction

Like it's predecessor, Converter Studio 2.0 uses the most advanced H.264 implementation in existence. MainConcept supplies among other things, the multiplexer and the encoding engines. A household name among video professionals, MainConcept is consistently winning awards for its superior picture quality. The purpose of this article is to highlight the features of Converter Studio, so I won't get geeky with the specifics of the actual codec. Just know that it kicks some serious ass.

Direct from DVD

Finally, I can now rip directly from a DVD into the multiple formats that I require. Although other applications are available that do this, like Handbrake, no other application gives you a better balance of features, ease of use, and output quality than Converter Studio. Previously I would use DVD Decrypter to rip the DVD, store it as a VOB, Remux it to an MPEG-2 Program Stream, and convert it using Converter Studio as an MPEG-4. Version 2.0 automates a lot of this process and saves drive space because I no longer have to store the VOB/MPEG-2. I've tried this feature on multiple unprotected DVD's and it works flawlessly.

Interlacing is Evil

To quote Alex Lindsey from the Pixel Corps, 'Interlacing is Evil'. This statement is so true. However, a lot of the made-for-TV productions available on DVD are either interlaced or telecined. So it's good to know that Converter Studio has the best deinterlace and inverse-telecine filters I've seen. The inverse-telecine filter was extremely impressive as it automatically determined and adjusted for the various pull-down methods. I've tried to inverse-telecine content using Sorenson Squeeze, Apple Compressor and a boat load of open source tools with moderate to awful results. Converter Studio on the other hand has yet to fail me. In fact, every non-progressive title I've thrown at it has worked - flawlessly! This alone is worth the price of admission.

Is Converter Studio For You?

Converter Studio is ideal for anyone looking for an inexpensive ($240 USD), next generation encoding solution. It's perfect for both beginners and professionals who have existing content who want to repurpose it for use on HD-DVD, Blu-ray, DVD, portable devices, media center appliances or for online distribution. It's an ideal solution for someone who just wants a solution that works, without having to cobble together a lot of open source tools or listen to excuses from commercial vendors as to why their product doesn't work as advertised. Although there are plenty of encoding tools, many are free, this is one application that you SHOULD consider buying.