Updates & Remix

[thisbluespirit]

1. I had a bad few days for various reasons, and, as ever, I tend to slip up on LJ when that happens. I'm caught up again, but apologies if I missed things. Today feels a little better at least! (Nothing terrible happened, but I went very low & technology failed on me at some points - if anyone knows of a good alternative to the VLC-player that isn't either madly fiddly & thus slow or also affected by this aspect ratio bug re. screencaps, I would be happy to hear about it. The only reason I have VLC Player is for screencapping. I do have another program that does it, but it's fiddly & stupid in many ways so I only use it when I'm forced. Also my little TV/DVD player broke yesterday, which is almost in the terrible category. I feel ridiculous that one person should need two TVs, but getting rid of the proper one downstairs would be silly & unhelpful and I can't quite get by yet without my little one to hand for the lowest days when downstairs is too much to handle. :-/)


2. Naturally, in the middle of this (well, prior to the TV-demise), I applied my usual solution of watching old TV with favourite actors and reached the episode of Hadleigh that starred James Maxwell. Hadleigh is not a show that goes in for villains, but they made an exception for James Maxwell. However, it was a nice role and nobody attached anything to his face whatsoever, so overall that was a win. I'll do a picspam and waffle more about that sometime. (Obviously I braved my annoying program to cap that one. But. Argh.) (I was meant to be watching the previous episode, but it was by the same person who kept writing about people wanting to impregnate everybody in Survivors and I promised myself that if he wrote one word about pregnancy, I was skipping to James Maxwell. I thought that was a joke, but the episode was about someone thinking she was pregnant. Dear God, all these 70s writers with weird obsessions that people keep letting them write...! /o\ I skipped to James Maxwell and was very happy to do so. Even if he was villainous.)


3. Anyway, nice things! Remix Redux went live this morning last night* & I had the lovely surprise of discovering that someone had remixed my Spooks ficlet where Ruth and Harry live happily ever after running a bookshop in Devon. So now there is more Ruth/Harry/Bookshop/can't stop being spies ever fic in the world & I rec it heartily to anyone who knows Spooks:

All Russians are Spies (The Retirement Remix) (1278 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Spooks | MI-5
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ruth Evershed/Harry Pearce
Characters: Ruth Evershed, Harry Pearce
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, bookshops
Summary:

Ruth's happy, running a second hand bookshop in Devon. Harry, however, is bored.

(I've read/looked at a few other fics, too, and I think I might have guessed at least three authors in the process, but I have some reading to do later on when I might be properly awake. Remix Madness won't go live until probably actually tomorrow for me).


4. Working on an hc_bingo square still, though! Should be done soon! (I mean, that square, not the card, or even a row yet, obv.)


* It was this morning for me!

Comments

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Did you find the beta reader you needed the other day?

More Harry/Ruth? Yes please!

[thisbluespirit]

I did, thanks! Justice Turtle came to my rescue & kindly weeded out my British-isms.

More Harry/Ruth? Yes please!

I thought you'd be almost as pleased as I was! :-D

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Oh good!

Hee! I am much amused and pleased. It was a lovely fic.

[thisbluespirit]

♥

[liadt]

*TV hugs*

The Any video converter people have video playing software, but it saves pngs which was a faff for me because I use photo-software to do 1x1 crops that only recognises jpgs. I had to resort to it though because VLC refused to do some Callan for me, argh. The aspect ratio was fine for old TV.

I'm glad James Maxwell had a decent role and avoided pregnancy;p Sometimes I wish TV was more *ahem* individual today and then I remember Ben Steed and his "friends" scripts.

\o/ for more bingo:)

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks!

And I'll check that out - pngs are just fine by me (not whatever it is the wretched other thing uses). And VLC isn't fine with 4:3, either, it's just so much less squished you almost don't notice it. Which I can get away with in a screencap, but not if I want to icon, as the distortion will get more noticeable. Stuff like that bugs me unreasonably. (Unfortunately, now I know that it's happening, and when it started, I realise that all my Raffles caps from the pilot are slightly squished!) And if I want to screencap anything wider than 4:3, I'm in seriously squashed territory and it won't let me change it. It's a known bug as of the last update, but they don't seem to be in any hurry to fix it. :-/ Presumably, it's not affecting everyone or there'd be a riot, but I'm regretting my last upgrade, I can tell you.

I'm glad James Maxwell had a decent role and avoided pregnancy;p Sometimes I wish TV was more *ahem* individual today and then I remember Ben Steed and his "friends" scripts.

James Maxwell took it into his head to pretend to be Gerald Harper! (They're the same age, I suppose, so he woke up one morning & thought why not?) As to the other, since I skipped the episode, I can't say if it was bad. It probably wasn't, but I was not in the mood for more pregnancy-related stuff from the man who was obsessed about repopulating the earth when I could have James Maxwell being a con-man instead.

[liadt]

I hadn't noticed - but comparing the sizes of old and new VLC screengrabs I see you're right. Grrr. My Avengers icons I'm slowly working on look OK though. Bah to squished Raffles - only Bunny is allowed to squish him;p

James Maxwell is fake!Adamant, that's hilarious! Oh the fic:) I can't see why there can't be more than one Adam imposter about.

[thisbluespirit]

It's very annoying, isn't it? :-/

James Maxwell is fake!Adamant, that's hilarious! Oh the fic:)

♥ It's so nice to know someone who thinks that's as funny as I do!

[jekesta]

I use KMPlayer purely for screencapping purposes. (Although it works fine as a player as well.) It does everything I want, you can move back and forth a frame at a time really easily, cap with a click of a key, and it'll do automatic capping too for when I'm making gifs. I love it.

[thisbluespirit]

That was the first one I downloaded, because I'd heard it mentioned as a good alternative, but it was so complicated, I couldn't find how to screencap on it at all, so I uninstalled it and went to look for something simpler. Which turned out to have the exact same bug as the VLC player. :-/

I may need to try it again, though - I was v tired and frustrated!

[jekesta]

It's possible newer versions of it are more complicated, I'm on a really old one that I never update because I don't believe in updating things.

And I meant to say that I'm really sorry about your tv. Things just shouldn't break, it's so tiring of them.

[thisbluespirit]

Out of interest, which key do you press to screencap? Then I could try re-downloading it and pressing that key instead of puzzling at the menus. (And, to be fair, I was probably a lot more tired and cross than was helpful when trying out new software. I just wanted VLC Player to stop squashing everything, really and then it would all be fine again.)

♥ Things will break, though. It's because it turns out that you bought it five years ago instead of yesterday and forced it to play hours and hours of ancient British telly and then halfway through an episode of The Prisoner, it decides it's finally had enough and refuses to ever read any more DVDs again. Or maybe it was just getting to the point where it couldn't understand DVDs without David Collings or James Maxwell or Alfred Burke.

[jekesta]

It's ctrl-a to save a cap on mine, and it saves to the default folder which I've set in the menu. Or it's ctrl-e to 'save as' if you want to set the folder then.

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks! I'll try it again when I'm not so tired and see if that works. I like being able to take screen shots! :-)

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I have no useful input on the subject of screencapping software, but just to say I'm sorry to hear you've been having a bad patch and glad to hear you're feeling a bit better today. :)

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks! Just as usual sort of down point; it happens! Nice to 'see' you again. :-)

[john_amend_all]

VLC does have menu options to override the aspect ratio, which I have to use when watching the rips of some of my offair Doctor Who recordings. At least on my version, they're under 'Video | Aspect Ratio'.

(ETA: I'm using version 2.1.6 Rincewind).

[thisbluespirit]

There's a bug in the latest VLC Player and it won't let you alter it - it doesn't matter what I set the aspect ratio to, the screencap is still in less-than-4:3, though it plays in the correct ratio no problem. I explored all the settings and I uninstalled it and re-installed it, and it did no good, so then I Googled and learned it was a bug and as yet there's nothing much you can do about it, it seems.

[john_amend_all]

That's annoying. I suppose you could rescale the screenshot in a paint program afterwards, if nothing else helps.

[thisbluespirit]

That would be even more fiddly than just using the other program I have that I don't use because of fiddliness. Which is why I'm looking for something else to use in the meantime!

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

Oh no. There's clearly something in the air - Liadt's fridge and your DVD player! Sorry to hear that. I hope you can get another one easily enough. Wretched tech, ganging up on humanity. I'm glad that Adam Adamant and James Maxwell made good watching though, even if James Maxwell was bad. Still, he wasn't pregnant, so there's that.

[thisbluespirit]

It finally occurred to me that I could get a cheap separate DVD player and attach it, which is a fraction of the cost of a new TV/DVD Player, so that wasn't too bad after all. :-) (A lot easier than poor Liadt and her fridge!)

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

The problem with modern tech is they are not built to last but to fail, usually because of some small but essential component that has reached the end of its life. So then you have to go out and buy a new one because no one does repairs any more.

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

Bless, honey. Hope things brightened up considerably! Hate it when tech fails like that. Arrrrghhh!!

But yay remix!! I know that made it a bit better...

*SQUISHES YOU*

[thisbluespirit]

Thank you! Things did, really. ♥

[scripsi.livejournal.com]

I hope better days are ahead. And you shouldn't apologize if you are absent! *hugs*

[thisbluespirit]

Thank you! ♥

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

I use KMPlayer for capping and find it works pretty well - I set the ratio manually, depending on what I'm capping, and so manage to avoid any serious distortion.

[thisbluespirit]

It's not about setting it manually - the VLC Player's latest edition has a bug so it doesn't matter what you do, it comes up squashed. Up until that point it did it in the right aspect ratio & you could set it if ever it was awkward (which it wasn't). I think I will try KM Player again if I can find a day on which I'm up to it, and see if it'll do it.

[flowsoffire.livejournal.com]

Remix and bingo, yay! :D

I'm sorry you haven't been feeling well ♥ I hope you're okay, and surviving the heat. Thinking of you ♥

it was by the same person who kept writing about people wanting to impregnate everybody in Survivors and I promised myself that if he wrote one word about pregnancy, I was skipping to James Maxwell. I thought that was a joke, but the episode was about someone thinking she was pregnant. Dear God, all these 70s writers with weird obsessions that people keep letting them write...! /o\
What the hell! o.O

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks! And, really, it hasn't been that hot where I am - the temperatures in a lot of the UK have been awful, but I live on the north east coast and we seem to be magically about 10 degrees cooler than London most days! I don't like to think about how awful London in 35 degree heat must be, but I'm here by the sea and the worst it got was 26 degrees one day. Or at least - so far that's been the case!

I hope it isn't too bad where you are, too! Just nice, whatever nice is for you.

♥

Dear God, all these 70s writers with weird obsessions that people keep letting them write...! /o\
What the hell! o.O

One day you might watch Blake's 7, and then we will introduce to the champion misogynistic writer of the 70s, Ben Steed. Ben Steed has to be seen to be believed. Jack Ronder (who seems to have a pregnancy obsession) is actually great in comparison. 0_o

[flowsoffire.livejournal.com]

Oh good!!! That's a relief, I got a bit worried about how hellish it must have been for you! :) Seaside ftw.

It's been okay for me, because I don't mind the heat so much, whereas I seem to grow more and more sensitive and uncomfortable in the cold each year—but my mother hates it and it really makes her feel anxious and awfully unwell, so it's good when it remains reasonable =P The actual heatwave is over now, but it's still fairly hot.

One day you might watch Blake's 7, and then we will introduce to the champion misogynistic writer of the 70s, Ben Steed. Ben Steed has to be seen to be believed. Jack Ronder (who seems to have a pregnancy obsession) is actually great in comparison. 0_o
That… does not sound appealing XD

[thisbluespirit]

B7, btw, is pretty much to Classic Who as Torchwood is to New Who except only semi-officially, and it is actually one of the very best old Tv things for the women. It just also has Ben Steed! It's a thing. We bond over it. ;-)