Bleh. I would really like to have Nova back by now. I just checked the Apple website to see what the status of its repair was, and the status is the exact same as it was a week ago: “Hold – Awaiting Part”. I might be tempted to step into the Apple Store tomorrow and see if they have any more information than that. I’m getting to the point right now where I’m beginning to get a bit impatient. Samus is working great for me right now, don’t get me wrong… the problem is that I still have Louie’s iMovie project that needs to be burned to a new DVD, and I don’t have a video editing program on Samus at all, much less one that would support iMovie files. Furthermore, I don’t even have a DVD burner, and I have 6 GB of files I transferred off a server that needs to be burned to DVD. I have a DVD burner on my home PC, true… it’s just that life would be a lot easier if I had a DVD burner on my actual laptop. Oh, well… like I said, I’ll contact Apple in the next day or two to find out what the holdup is.
Yesterday was quite a bit of fun… when I finally got home, I decided to spend the evening in the kitchen so as to keep Chase calmed down. I set up Samus in the kitchen, got logged into the wireless network, and was good to go… or so I thought until I checked my email. Turned out there was a new GameSpot video concerning MK Shaolin Monks posted, and I needed to do a news story on it. So, I needed to find a way to take screenshots of videos, seeing as normally video players use an overlay on the screen which prevent normal screenshots from working. Fortunately, I had installed mplayer on Samus, and I was able to find out in its FAQ how to make it run with no overlay. So, I ran it, paused it at the requisite places… and then used the Gimp to acquire a screenshot of the window, crop out the non-video parts, and export it to PNG. In a way, it actually turned out easier than my procedure in Windows does (which is virtually the same, except that I use VLC). So, all’s good there for now…
I’m also waiting on my new monitor to arrive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824163129
It should take up less room, consume less power, and put out less heat than my current CRT. The only downside is that I very likely will have to get a longer DVI cable for it so that it will reach my PC, which is a bit of a reach from the monitor. As soon as I have it up, I’ll take a pic. :-)
Anyway, time for me to check back on this other laptop I’m working on (in between coming to and from this post). Fun fun…