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	<title>Brilang.comTechnology | Brilang.com</title>
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	<link>http://www.brilang.com</link>
	<description>Stuff I do, or stuff I find interesting</description>
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		<title>Download DVD movies from Apple&#8217;s iTunes?</title>
		<link>http://www.brilang.com/2008/05/download-dvd-movies-from-apples-itunes/161</link>
		<comments>http://www.brilang.com/2008/05/download-dvd-movies-from-apples-itunes/161#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 02 May 2008 04:55:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brian Lang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellaneous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.brianlang.ca/2008/05/01/download-dvd-movies-from-apples-itunes/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Apple announced today the ability to purchase movies from iTunes in the US (I&#8217;m sure it will spread worldwide in time). Now, the news release doesn&#8217;t mention what file size the movie downloads are, but I think it&#8217;s ridiculous that anyone would consider this for standard viewing. Here&#8217;s why. Standard DVD is 4.7 GB. Double sided is 9.4 GB. (Wikipedia: DVD). If we start considering the remaining High Definition format (Blu-ray), we&#8217;re looking at 25 GB (standard) or 50 GB (double sided). The average download speed in the US is 5288 kbps and 4066 kbps in Canada (from Speedtest.net May 1, 2008 21:30 PDT). Plugging these numbers into a Download Calculator gives these results: File Size Download Time (Days:Hours:Min:Sec) @ 1.5Mbps-DSL/Cable @ 3.0Mbps-DSL/Cable @ 6.0Mbps-DSL/Cable 4.7 GB 0:06:47:59 0:03:28:53 0:01:44:26 9.4 GB 0:13:35:58 0:06:57:46 0:03:28:53 25 GB 1:12:10:08 0:18:31:06 0:09:15:33 50 GB 3:00:20:16 1:13:02:13 0:18:31:06 The download file size of a movie through iTunes is not available to me at present. Nor is the pixel count to be able to properly compare these maximum DVD and Blu-ray file sizes with iTunes. I would hazard a guess that if you buy a movie from iTunes, you will get lower quality than [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Blog Post from Google Docs</title>
		<link>http://www.brilang.com/2008/03/159/159</link>
		<comments>http://www.brilang.com/2008/03/159/159#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:08:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brian Lang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellaneous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.brianlang.ca/2008/03/12/159/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is a sample blog post created and edited using Google Docs. Once I&#8217;m done typing this message I will attempt to post it to my blog at http://www.brianlang.ca. I&#8217;m including a photo of my son Joseph picking what he wants to eat for supper. Just to see how Google Docs handles it. Update: Well, Google did it&#8217;s job &#8211; kind of. Missing from the Publish to blog feature is the Blog Post Title. Something Needs To Be Done! Otherwise I will have to come here and edit every post anyway. What&#8217;s the point in using an external editor if I have to come here and edit after the fact. Why not just start here and write the post here in the first place. Or in me email software which is &#8211; oh &#8211; Gmail? I could post a blog post via email with a title, why not from Google Docs? Other than that, it looks OK. Google Docs will even let me un-publish a post, edit it and publish it again. There&#8217;s also a re-publish option, but I didn&#8217;t try that today.]]></description>
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		<title>Vista Beta 2 not ready for primetime</title>
		<link>http://www.brilang.com/2006/06/vista-beta-2-not-ready-for-primetime/135</link>
		<comments>http://www.brilang.com/2006/06/vista-beta-2-not-ready-for-primetime/135#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Jun 2006 03:50:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brian Lang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellaneous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.brianlang.ca/2006/06/20/vista-beta-2-not-ready-for-primetime/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, it&#8217;s obvious it&#8217;s still a Beta, but it&#8217;s working reasonably well for me. I&#8217;ve had a few times where an application would freeze up and one BSOD! I have not had any one specific item cause repeated problems. Most of the software I use regularly is working fine. The one thing I miss most is my SonicWall Global VPN Client because I cannot connect to the office without that software. I&#8217;ve switched the UI from Windows Vista Aero to Windows Vista Basic which freed up a lot of memory and processing power. It seems my 2.4 GHz Celeron isn&#8217;t up to the task of running the Aero interface. I do have a 256 MB video card and 768 MB of main memory. It appears that more main memory is a requirement. Based on the performance I&#8217;ve seen so far, I would not recommend running this system on a Celeron processor, or with any less than 256 MB video memory (on a dedicated graphics processor card) and 1GB main memory. It would be far better to run with 2GB main memory. As I write this, I&#8217;m using Firefox (with four tabs open), FileZilla (doing a online file deletion task), Picasa [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Windows Vista Beta 2 SUCCESS!</title>
		<link>http://www.brilang.com/2006/06/windows-vista-beta-2-success/134</link>
		<comments>http://www.brilang.com/2006/06/windows-vista-beta-2-success/134#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Jun 2006 04:06:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brian Lang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellaneous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.brianlang.ca/2006/06/12/windows-vista-beta-2-success/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[To recap the story: I Downloaded Windows Vista Beta 2 at work on Friday. Burned a copy to DVD (you have to use DVD) but it was a bad copy. Re-downloaded it on Saturday and burned a nice shiny new DVD (burned at 4x &#8211; recommended to burn at 2x &#8211; talk about slow). I Ran first crack at installing it late Saturday night &#8211; found I had to un-install a few programs first (McAfee Security Center and Anti-Virus; Windows Defender; Real Player) so I went to bed. Sunday, I uninstalled the requested software and tried to install. Tried to install again, and again, and again. Four tries, no success &#8211; each time the install rolled back nicely to Windows XP Pro SP2 without any problem &#8211; but not the result I wanted. Monday &#8211; Oilers vs Carolina hockey game starts. I Browsed MS blogs while the Oilers lose the game. Found a possible solution &#8211; copy the entire contents of the Windows Vista DVD to hard disk and install from there. Did the copy; ran the install; SUCCESS! I&#8217;m running on Windows Vista Ultimate (Beta 2) right now. Took about 2.5 hours to install on my system. The install [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Installing Vista Beta &#8211; Take 2</title>
		<link>http://www.brilang.com/2006/06/installing-vista-beta-take-2/133</link>
		<comments>http://www.brilang.com/2006/06/installing-vista-beta-take-2/133#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 11 Jun 2006 20:01:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brian Lang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellaneous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.brianlang.ca/2006/06/11/installing-vista-beta-take-2/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ok. I&#8217;ve walked through the first few steps again, but went the Custom route. The installer asked which drive I wanted to use, told me what it was going to do (move the old version of Windows to a folder called Windows.old along with other things too) and then started installing. This time I got an error copying files to my computer. I&#8217;ll give it one more try and see what happens.]]></description>
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		<title>Upgrading to Windows Vista Beta 2</title>
		<link>http://www.brilang.com/2006/06/upgrading-to-windows-vista-beta-2/132</link>
		<comments>http://www.brilang.com/2006/06/upgrading-to-windows-vista-beta-2/132#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 11 Jun 2006 18:52:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brian Lang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellaneous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.brianlang.ca/2006/06/11/upgrading-to-windows-vista-beta-2/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m upgrading my home PC to Windows Vista using the Beta 2 version just released by Microsoft. Here&#8217;s my story. Before I even considered updating to Vista, I ran the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor which found no impediments to installing Vista. Here&#8217;s my base system specs: Intel Celeron 2.4GHz 768 MB RAM 230 MB Disk (useful space) in two partitions DVD burner CD burner NVIDIA GeForce FX5500 (256MB memory) 10/100 Network card And my peripherals: Logitech wheel mouse Microsoft multimedia keyboard HP PSC 1510 (printer/scanner/copier) HP Photosmart 935 camera Here&#8217;s what I encountered during the install process. I apologize if the steps are out of order at all. First off I made sure to copy my files to a separate partition on my hard drive. Then I popped in the DVD and started the installation. The first screen asked me to check with Microsoft to download the latest installation file. The installer took a while to find the file (busy server at Microsoft I think), but once it did, the download was very quick. The installer then quit and restarted. Next, the installer continued with the Collection information step. During this phase, it identified three pieces of software that I [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>XBox 360 Media Connect finally working</title>
		<link>http://www.brilang.com/2006/01/xbox-360-media-connect-finally-working/97</link>
		<comments>http://www.brilang.com/2006/01/xbox-360-media-connect-finally-working/97#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 22 Jan 2006 05:27:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brian Lang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellaneous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Entertainment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.brianlang.ca/2006/01/21/xbox-360-media-connect-finally-working/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[VICTORY IS MINE! I have defeated the XBox 360 and its media playing demons! Or something like that. What I ended up doing was this: Format C:\ Re-Install Windows XP Re-Install All Software. Fortunately I have two hard drives and I could use the second for backup. I don&#8217;t recommend this if you don&#8217;t have any way to do your backups. Not the best solution in the world, but whatever. It worked. I just watched a slide show of photos from one of my recent hiking trips while playing music from my computer. Very nice now that it works. I am using Apple&#8217;s iTunes software to manage my music collection because my wife has an iPod. I&#8217;ve shared the music collection between us using information gleaned from a post on marius.org. I have turned off iTunes &#8220;Keep iTunes Music folder organized&#8221; feature and am organizing the music manually in a Genre -> Artist -> Album hierarchy. I&#8217;ve left the &#8220;Copy files to iTunes music folder&#8230;&#8221; option selected. So iTunes creates an Artist -> Album folder for me when I import it. Then I manually file the music where it should be. Then I remove the album from iTunes. Then I [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>Digital Music and iTunes Libraries</title>
		<link>http://www.brilang.com/2005/12/digital-music-and-itunes-libraries/68</link>
		<comments>http://www.brilang.com/2005/12/digital-music-and-itunes-libraries/68#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Dec 2005 05:25:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brian Lang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellaneous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Entertainment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.brianlang.ca/2005/12/27/digital-music-and-itunes-libraries/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With the Christmas arrival of my new XBox 360, I&#8217;ve decided to convert my CD library to digital music. That brought up a bunch of questions and issues, most of which I have now resolved. Here are some of the highlights of my search for digital music. I&#8217;ve decided to create all my digital music files in MP3 format so that I can use my XBox 360 to stream the music from my PC through my sound system. The XBox 360 will not read AAC files, which had been my first choice. So I&#8217;ve now started ripping all my CD&#8217;s into MP3 format at 192 kbps with iTunes. The benefit of MP3 files is that they&#8217;re widely supported. The biggest drawback is that they&#8217;re not the best format out there. There&#8217;s much debate over what is the best format, but I&#8217;m not going into that here. I settled on MP3 mainly for the compatibility reason. I wanted to set up Apple&#8217;s iTunes software to allow myself and my wife to share one music library instead of each having our own (possibly with disk-space wasting duplicates). The Sharing option within iTunes 6.0.1.3 only works across the network, and does not look [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Increasing capacity of flash memory cards</title>
		<link>http://www.brilang.com/2005/09/increasing-capacity-of-flash-memory-cards/51</link>
		<comments>http://www.brilang.com/2005/09/increasing-capacity-of-flash-memory-cards/51#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Sep 2005 17:46:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brian Lang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellaneous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.brianlang.ca/2005/09/14/increasing-capacity-of-flash-memory-cards/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Samsung will start producing new memory cards next year that have the potential to hold 32 GB of digital files (music, pictures, video, whatever). They also announced a new 7.2 megapixel sensor. I would imagine that by next Christmas, we will start seeing new 7 megapixel cameras at the consumer level from various manufacturers. Wow! The file size of photos taken at the best possible quality level will be huge. Are 32GB memory cards too big or too small? One 32GB memory card would hold more photos that I take on an average hiking trip, or more than I took on my two week summer vacation this year but my entire collection would quickly grow beyond the capacity of one card. One card would hold my entire collection of digital music and all the documents I&#8217;ve ever produced or saved. But as I fill the cards, I would ultimately start worrying about physically losing them, or worry about them failing. How does one protect against loss of a memory card? How about replacing hard disks in computers with memory cards instead? Can it be done? How fast would Windows XP boot from a memory card instead of from a hard [...]]]></description>
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		<title>XBox 360 to help cure cancer?</title>
		<link>http://www.brilang.com/2005/06/xbox-360-to-help-cure-cancer/41</link>
		<comments>http://www.brilang.com/2005/06/xbox-360-to-help-cure-cancer/41#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Jun 2005 21:00:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brian Lang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellaneous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.brianlang.ca/index.php/2005/06/14/xbox-360-to-help-cure-cancer/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Wired News: How Gamers Can Help Cure Cancer Wired News has an interesting article on distributed computing with a twist. Why not put to use all the spare computing cycles that game consoles generate? Given that the current XBox is a 733 MHz machine, and the XBox 360 is supposed to have 3 3.25 GHz CPUs, you&#8217;re looking at over 13 times more processing power than the original. And given that most XBoxes are connected to the internet full time, why not process data in a distributed computing grid?]]></description>
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