Weird family phrases

Posted onCategoriesfamily

Did you have any weird family phrases growing up?

Here are some that we had:

“ootsie-ootsie” – a small hill that when traversed causes that dropping feeling in your stomach

“weenie” – if you can’t take it, you’re a weenie

“any-who” – a variation of anyway

“bye-bye” – it’s not just bye, it’s bye-bye

“oosa-good-puhpay” – you are a good puppy.  we were saying that before Jar-Jar Binks

“hide and watch” – in other words, stop asking and start watching

“well, we did that” – someone’s bound to say it when we’re done with, well, pretty much anything

Sweet Linux Media Apps For Vacation

Posted onCategoriestechnology & science

So I just got back from a nice vacation with my family. I borrowed the department Asus Eee Pc 900 for the trip. It had CrunchBang Linux on it, which wouldn’t update anymore. I reformatted it with Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition in about 45 minutes. Everything worked with the base install.  Sweet.

On my Dell Inspirion lappy running Ubuntu 10.04, I installed and tried several DVD ripping utilities.  I settled on Thoggen which was much simpler than the others.  I ripped several DVDs into .ogv format, copied them to the netbook with my 2GB USB flash drive.  Boom.

Then I installed VLC on the netbook to play them.  “F” for full-screen mode is your friend.  Awesome.

The default screen saver and power management settings were not conducive to watching a 2-hour video.  I found Caffeine, which allowed me to override the power management settings for a specific period.  Perfect.

Not long after we got on the road, I noticed my wife’s iPod Nano is missing all of its playlists.  GTKPod to the rescue.  I plugged in the iPod, specified the model, mounted it, re-created a few playlists, and wrote them right back to the iPod. All without iTunes.  Easy-peasy.