BilikFamily.com

Good morning! Starting out this 5th day of Christmas at a windy and brisk 23°F and it's not likely to get much higher today. Michelle will be teaching her 20/20/20 class this morning while I'll be working from home. 6:37am

One of the many monster software packages auto-updated in yesterday's MacBook updates was that Swiss Army Knife of video: ffmpeg. I should try it tonight and see how it does in converting videos into cell phone compatible formats/sizes. 9:50am

Back from a late lunch w/my spiritual director. En route offered a rosary for Michelle's continuing good health. It's a whopping 12°F and windy outside! ☃ What! Am I back in Chicago? No wonder Michelle bailed on grocery shopping today. 2:48pm

Due to some IT/licensing issues, I logged out a little early today. Now reading (related link) "Complexity Theory and Environmental Management", an interesting speech by Michael Crichton. 5:17pm

Playing with 'ffmpeg', trying to transcode Disney's new "Prep & Landing" Christmas special to something that would fit on my cell phone screen. Now I understand why there was so much interest in GPU acceleration of video transcoding. Still... it's transcoding ~90 frames per second. It would be cool if ffmpeg could use both of my CPUs in doing the conversion. 7:24pm

Did a little catching up on today's feasts: It is/was the Feast of St. Thomas “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest!” Becket and today's Gospel was the presentation of Jesus in the Temple (with Simeon). [Luke 2:22-35] Heavy eyelids now. Good night all. If you're in the northeast, stay warm! It's currently 9°F here and still windy as heck! 9:11pm

Bookmarks I made today:

Star Wars Meets Facebook
Comment: Funniest parody of Facebook status updates I've seen yet. [Hat tip: Lisa 'Franciscat' ]
Excerpt: Last week CollegeHumor posted a pretty entertaining rendition of what it would be like if the Star Wars characters had access to Facebook

The Mutt E-Mail Client
Comment: Refreshing my memory on how to use Mutt. I used to use it daily back at AMD but hadn't used it since. I always enjoyed how quickly I could navigate through my emails from the keyboard with it. http://fastmail.fm/ is even faster with Mutt.
Excerpt: Mutt is a small but very powerful text-based mail client for Unix operating systems

Google Chrome
Comment: I just wanted to make another plug to Mac fanboys to try Google's Chrome now that it's available on the Mac. I've been using it for over a week now instead of Safari and have grown to prefer it. Of course if you're a Firefox+plugins++ type, there's no comparison.
Excerpt: Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

Decade of mobile: From the first camera phone to the iPhone 3GS
Comment: A quick read to review how fast things have changed in just the past ten years.
Excerpt: It's almost 2010 so we thought we'd take a look at what's happened in mobile over the past ten years. Everything has happened. No, really, have a look. From ..

Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor running next gen mobile phones
Comment: Besides showing the Snapdragon that I work on, this BBC video also talks about the new Qualcomm mirasol displays for dramatically reduced power.
Excerpt: Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor running next generation mobile phone

Our lab debug setup
Comment: Was digging through my Flickr photos when I found this old picture from early this past summer when I was sent to San Diego to help debug a graphics issue with the early samples of the Qualcomm SnapDragon chip.
Excerpt: At the heart of that board on the center of the bench is a tiny chip 12mm x 12mm with 470 pins and a boatload of logic -- 2 CPUs, a video decoder, audio, 3D graphics, cellular modem, etc. In other words, it's a SnapDragon. It can run Linux (ie. Android), WinMobile, BREW, and others.

Snapshots I took today: