you can try plugging the modem direct into a PC with the ethernet when it's on the fritz as a way to make sure it's not the cable modem or your isp's connection. they go down from time to time but not that often. most likely upgrading the firmware of your router will fix it, go to 192.128.0.1 (sometimes it can also be ..1.1) and try admin/admin or admin/password and poke around for the firm version, then drop by the people who make your router's website and get the latest updates.
I'd be a little more likely to put some cult classics on the top like Meet the Feebles, How to get ahead in advertising, and anything by Jan Svankmajer my favorite being Conspirators of Pleasure. But the real reason im commenting is to self-whore my own completely ignored 99 minute animated feature The Meaty McMeat Show also hosted via bittorrent on legaltorrents.com .. n' s'more stuff
just to follow up on this, VLC has ascii mode which is tres cool/ however im pretty sure that you can't export this to a video file. It's the same reason you can't take a gimp winsnap screenshot of a dvd or something playing in windows media player.
Idealy youll want to avoid having to make the ascii video frame by frame which is just needless button clicking. as i like to say, 'there's more than one way to skin a hippy' so here's a work around:
You need a video card that has video out and video in. If you're thinking about making videos on a pc i'd highly reccomend it. I have an ancient ati all in wonder 128 and it does fine. I've used it to make most of my stop motion films.
in vlc when you've got your ascii video playing right click on the top bar and choose properties, then hack the command window props to change the font size up to where it nearly fills an 800x600 window and then record that playing live as video out to whatever device you have, dv cam, vcr, whatever. Then you just have to play the recorded movie into the line in and rerecord it. Afterwards you can crop out the windows background and viola your own ascii video.
Marijuana: buy it used or read the helpful reviews (5 star rating!). personally i think what's weird is that the release date listed here and at google's cache of the same site are 2 years off. wtf? either way it's uhh, pretty old.
I got VLC to stream video using color ascii art, which is way cool, but I can't get it to save the output correctly, it saves but it's not the color ascii art, just the source video, and when I try to full-screen the window it cuts off a bit. Magic Ascii Studio World Bucket e-2000 Solution (warning: blink tags) might be more what you're looking for.
for something as crappy as ascii art you could easily lower the frame rate down to 6-8 frames per second and truly cut corners. I bet it would look more fluid and less jittery at a slower frame rate.
My idea depends on how much film you want to do as it requires a lot of button clicking. You could output all your video to a still image sequence (at a resonable frame rate like 12-15fps) and then convert them individually with Ascii Generator (freeware). If this seems too daunting (animation is the boring man's art form) you might try contacting these dudes instead. Or maybe track down a photoshop plugin and bust out the batch processing. At 12 fps you'd only have to convert 72 images per minute, which is nuthin'.
I'd have to put a vote in for the latest winamp. It handles large amounts of mp3's rather quickly, the media library lets you sort through everything and change multiple ID3 tags, you can program your own custom AVS visualization or d/l hundreds. The amount of cool and useful plugins is staggering and allows you to support virtually every audio codec, there's over 6,000 free radio stations and of 100 free internet TV stations in the media library (including my surrealist animation Delaware Based Productions *plug* *plug*) as well as winamp.com's vault of fascist on demand pop songs and videos. There's an extension for firefox so you can control winamp from the bottom of your browser, theres a plugin to work with your video capture cards to watch tv through winamp. Theres a plugin to control winamp with a cel phone. There's probably a plugin for nearly everything because winamp is so darned popular. The only cheese I have is that they want you to pay money to use it as a music cd burner, which I dont use. and dBpowerAmp is a good free fast mp3 ripper/converter.
i make animated features
posted by psychobum 19 years ago
In "Curious George: Broadband Takes Naps"
sorry, i meant 192.168.0.1
posted by psychobum 19 years ago
you can try plugging the modem direct into a PC with the ethernet when it's on the fritz as a way to make sure it's not the cable modem or your isp's connection. they go down from time to time but not that often. most likely upgrading the firmware of your router will fix it, go to 192.128.0.1 (sometimes it can also be ..1.1) and try admin/admin or admin/password and poke around for the firm version, then drop by the people who make your router's website and get the latest updates.
posted by psychobum 19 years ago
In "100 Movies that deserve more love."
I'd be a little more likely to put some cult classics on the top like Meet the Feebles, How to get ahead in advertising, and anything by Jan Svankmajer my favorite being Conspirators of Pleasure. But the real reason im commenting is to self-whore my own completely ignored 99 minute animated feature The Meaty McMeat Show also hosted via bittorrent on legaltorrents.com .. n' s'more stuff
posted by psychobum 19 years ago
In "Super Fantabulous MoFi Meetup Deluxe"
that's me: nathan smithe (silent e), and sometimes mindy, larleen, etc.nsfw i think the etc. is nsfw
posted by psychobum 19 years ago
In "MoFi T Shirt Orders"
One medium, (cool design btw)
posted by psychobum 19 years ago
In "Curious, George: ascii video conversion?"
just to follow up on this, VLC has ascii mode which is tres cool/ however im pretty sure that you can't export this to a video file. It's the same reason you can't take a gimp winsnap screenshot of a dvd or something playing in windows media player. Idealy youll want to avoid having to make the ascii video frame by frame which is just needless button clicking. as i like to say, 'there's more than one way to skin a hippy' so here's a work around: You need a video card that has video out and video in. If you're thinking about making videos on a pc i'd highly reccomend it. I have an ancient ati all in wonder 128 and it does fine. I've used it to make most of my stop motion films. in vlc when you've got your ascii video playing right click on the top bar and choose properties, then hack the command window props to change the font size up to where it nearly fills an 800x600 window and then record that playing live as video out to whatever device you have, dv cam, vcr, whatever. Then you just have to play the recorded movie into the line in and rerecord it. Afterwards you can crop out the windows background and viola your own ascii video.
posted by psychobum 19 years ago
In "What's first on my Christmas wish list?"
Marijuana: buy it used or read the helpful reviews (5 star rating!). personally i think what's weird is that the release date listed here and at google's cache of the same site are 2 years off. wtf? either way it's uhh, pretty old.
posted by psychobum 19 years ago
In "Curious, George: ascii video conversion?"
I got VLC to stream video using color ascii art, which is way cool, but I can't get it to save the output correctly, it saves but it's not the color ascii art, just the source video, and when I try to full-screen the window it cuts off a bit. Magic Ascii Studio World Bucket e-2000 Solution (warning: blink tags) might be more what you're looking for.
posted by psychobum 19 years ago
for something as crappy as ascii art you could easily lower the frame rate down to 6-8 frames per second and truly cut corners. I bet it would look more fluid and less jittery at a slower frame rate.
posted by psychobum 19 years ago
woops, i mean 12x60 = 720 images a minute heh heh. still though, you have to suffer for your art!
posted by psychobum 19 years ago
My idea depends on how much film you want to do as it requires a lot of button clicking. You could output all your video to a still image sequence (at a resonable frame rate like 12-15fps) and then convert them individually with Ascii Generator (freeware). If this seems too daunting (animation is the boring man's art form) you might try contacting these dudes instead. Or maybe track down a photoshop plugin and bust out the batch processing. At 12 fps you'd only have to convert 72 images per minute, which is nuthin'.
posted by psychobum 19 years ago
In "Monkeys"
.
posted by psychobum 20 years ago
In "Is this the Best?"
I'd have to put a vote in for the latest winamp. It handles large amounts of mp3's rather quickly, the media library lets you sort through everything and change multiple ID3 tags, you can program your own custom AVS visualization or d/l hundreds. The amount of cool and useful plugins is staggering and allows you to support virtually every audio codec, there's over 6,000 free radio stations and of 100 free internet TV stations in the media library (including my surrealist animation Delaware Based Productions *plug* *plug*) as well as winamp.com's vault of fascist on demand pop songs and videos. There's an extension for firefox so you can control winamp from the bottom of your browser, theres a plugin to work with your video capture cards to watch tv through winamp. Theres a plugin to control winamp with a cel phone. There's probably a plugin for nearly everything because winamp is so darned popular. The only cheese I have is that they want you to pay money to use it as a music cd burner, which I dont use. and dBpowerAmp is a good free fast mp3 ripper/converter.
posted by psychobum 20 years ago
In "Peter Pan"
Looking pretty good for somebody who's 50 years old.
posted by psychobum 20 years ago
(limited to the most recent 20 comments)