Chris Worfolk's Blog

Hmm, I’m using the desktop at home to write so I’m using Beonex. I used to love this browser as it was my first escape from Internet Explorer and I still do although there are things that annoy me now I am so used to using Firefox and the two do things a little differently.

Anyway, I’m working this weekend, I did a close last night and I have another one night. While I can’t say I’m looking forward to it massively, I quite enjoyed last night. I have another 3 shifts next week though Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday (the weekend being closes) as well as doing VSA on Thursday and Friday and working for SoC on Thursday. So I’m working 5 days next week on top of my full time university degree.

It is bringing the money in though which is always welcome as I really want my new laptop now. With all this traveling around for work and such I really want something I can bring home and just connect up to the net and continue with all my work, code, emails, etc.

It’s looking like it’s going to cost like £1,000 though so I really need to dig into my finances sometime this week and see how everything is going.

Think about it. If Claire and Phil were going to get together, Thursday night would have been the night. There was just those two and Michelle who was drunk which regardless of the fact she has a good memory while drunk still looses creditability in said state. Claire was tispy by the time we left The Old Bar and they continued drinking for hours at Strawberry Fields and if you are going to get plastered anywhere a cocktail bar is one of the most likely places. Plus it’s a long standing fact Claire thinks Phil is very attractive. It just seems like all the pieces fit.

Did my first ISS appointment today. Consisted of ringing ISS up after my appointment disappeared, they said someone had forgotten to put the appointment on and put it back on. I then turned up on time, nobody answered the door. Phoned Victoria, she said it was fixed. 4 minutes, not bad at all.

Is there something going on between Dan and Si? I mean, I know Dan is married and all but it was clearly a scam wedding as neither me or Sarann were invited. And the whole having a kid thing could be a cover too. Was it even Si we were rumouring about? I know it was someone we placed with Dan and I suspect it was Si but it could have been someone else. So many questions, so few answers.

Ok so I had an DivX file I wanted to to take the audio from. It can’t be that hard to do right?

Well Premiere can’t deal with DivX. Indeed nothing can deal with DivX. None of the conversion software seems to be able to. The only thing that could out of all things was Windows Movie Maker. So I imported it into there and exported it as a WMV file.

I then imported this into the Windows Media Stream Editor so that I could convert it into an audio file. This managed to convert it into a WMA file. I then imported this into Premiere. Premiere conformed it so that it could be edited in the timeline and by the time it was done the file had been re-arranged and randomly restarted the whole audio at points (for example at 3 minutes in it jumped back to the start – but it didn’t jump, it was still playing the file, it’s just the file at this point was the same as the start even though the original file was different if that makes sense. Basically instead of it playing 1, 2, 3, etc it would play 1, 1, 2, 1, and so on).

It as weird that it did this as it plays fine when you just open the file in Windows Media Player. So I took the file into Audio Conversion Wizard. Which crashed the first time I tried to convert it. I then went through again and altered some settings and exported it as a WAV file.

Ok so I now have a standard WAV file that I imported into Premiere. That so far doesn’t seem to be jumping back to the start. I then go through the file splitting into sections I want. Once I have done this I have to, section by section, copy and paste that section into a different timeline and export it as a WAV.

Done that, now it’s a case of going through the songs one by one and working out what song it is so I can rename the file appropriately. The audio files are also hidiously quite. So after all this what do I have? A bunch of MP3s (as I originally wanted them) but they are too quiet and only have artist details in the ID3 tags – no track numbers or titles. Brilliant. And that is presuming Audio Conversation Wizard which is currently converting them from WAV to MP3 completes without problems.

After enduring quite a lengthy period of lectures yesterday and squeezing in time to record the first bout of Jimmy Turtlehouse footage I headed off to the Linux Install Fest that was being run by CompSoc. It was quite entertaining to wander up and down the room going “hmmm” at various computers though the whole concept had got Maths Chris a little over excited.

I headed off to the union at 7 to check out Christianity Explored. It’s basically what they did at Alpha last year (not that I went to that) but with a new name. If they were attempting to bring new people into Christianity they are failing quite miserably though as it was (as with all these Christian events) packed with Christians and very little else. Still they did offer a free meal of sweet and sour chicken so I think I’ll head back next week.

I then finished the night at The Tunnel Club. The Kooks had cancelled their gig so they were doing free entry. Given it was 10:45 when I went down and that it was free entry I went down thinking “there is no way you’re going to get in to this Chris, it’s 2 weeks after freshers week they would be sold out even if it wasn’t free entry.”

I then walked straight in to find about 15 people there. The bar was deserted, the bar staff just standing around and the dance floor was completely empty. Which worked out really well as I got a seat at the side and even though it filled up the crowd didn’t move that far forward so I was like 2 metres away from the band and had a perfect view of them. The band, known as Olympus Mons or something were really good as well, I was well impressed.

Once it got busy the atmosphere really picked up as well. They moved the DJ stand into the middle of the stage after the band had finished and Chris Martin was really getting into it and dancing about. Plus every time he put a popular track on the crowd went mental. Spent some time hanging out with Jeremy too, it’s good to know there are other indie fans who like Tunnel Club as well as myself and Rich.

So yeah, all in all it was a wicked night. I normally get bored after the band has finished and leave like before midnight as I mainly go for the band anyway but I was there till like 1:30 last night. At £3.50 advanced for a good night of music and a live band you really can’t go wrong.

Today, Worfolk Pictures rolled out its brand new show, Jimmy Turtlehouse Guitar Hero. While you can find all the details about it on the website and in the videos what I really want to talk about is the rollout that has been done in order to support the show.

First of all, we started with a new website on a new domain. It’s a basic WordPress install with a template added on but it gets the job done. The videos for the show are then hosted on Revver as they split advertising revenues with the content producer.

It far from ends there though. The videos have also been added to YouTube due to it’s popularity as well as Google Video and Metacafe. To really get the viral going we have also added profiles on MySpace and Bebo so that people can connect that way and the videos will soon be added to MySpace Video too. There are several other avenues being considered too including MSN Soapbox (beta so we can’t get an account but I’ve put my email address on the notification list), Yahoo Video and a long list of social networking sites to trawl through.

On top of that the website is obviously going to get mentioned on Worfolk Online’s site, and the blog and of course the videos are on Worfolk Picture’s site as well. Plus I’m now mentioning it on this blog and any other blogs I remember I have which are suitable to promote such a topic.

I’m also looking into getting it listed on iTunes and the other podcasting directories. Did I miss anything? Maybe a story on Digg? A few more social networks couldn’t hurt. But I think we are going to manage to get the word out about the show quite well.

I feel I need to eleborate on this subject. It was no freak occurance they spent the entire weekend together. During the week last week they also spent 7 hours one night doing arty things (Claire was doing a charity art show dealie) and the time included a romantic mealish at the Moorish restaurant.

They have also been planning getaways together including a sea side trip and looking over history lets not forget the time they ended up in Skipton. It’s a long history indeed. Kieran is also planning to go skiing at Christmas and Claire is going to Japan next year – I’m sure we can all see the connection there.

Has anyone else noticed that the aforementioned house is known as “Matt and Kat’s house” in which Kieran just happens to live. It’s never Matt’s house, Kat’s house, Kieran’s house or Matt, Kat and Keiran’s house. It’s always just Matt and Kat’s house.

Therefore I’ve come up with a few solutions to the problem.

• Kieran changes his name to either Matt or Kat
• Kat runs off with Sarann and it becomes Matt and Kieran’s house
• I am promoted to honerary resident like at Sarann’s house and we call it Chris’s house

I’ve spent a bit of time getting some coding done recently which has been cool as my activities over the past few weeks have included hardly any. Combine that with the meditation inspired by Garden State which I am currently watching and will probably blog more about later and it’s brought up some interesting thoughts about the future.

I mean, uni is ok but so far the lectures are scoring pretty high on the boring scale. And work isn’t the same since I got back from uni. So I’m still fairly unsure as to which is the lesser of two evils. I really need to spend more time on my online ventures and get them to a much higher level. Things are building slowly but they need to be moving much faster.

I also think I need to be more pro-active in getting some group projects and ventures together. The sooner the better, I might post a few ads and forum posts around and see what happens.