My new blog!

Yes, it finally happened. I moved from blogger to another blog system, which I'm hosting myself.

It is currently still under development, but I've already copied my posts (All three of them!) to the other blog.

Click on the title of this post to visit my new blog!

Embedding video on your blog or website

As I'm using Mac OS X, I'm writing this little guide for users of that platform. This guide may still be useful if you have not yet seen the light and converted to OS X, though! The part on embedding the video is universal to every operating system.

I'm not going to write about making the video and editing it. I'm assuming you've done that already, using other guides or by trial and error.

First, the video needs to be converted to flv, as we want the player to be embedded, like on almost all of the popular sites, using Flash. On OS X, there is a fantastic tool to convert any video format to any other video format. That tool is called ffmpegX .

Download and install ffmpegX (use the guide on their site if you have problems). Then start ffmpegX and drag your video file into the ffmpegX window. The "Source format" pane will show some details on your video. Now select "flv" from the drop down box in the "Target format" pane. If you need to edit more settings use the tabs (Summary, Video, Audio, Filters, Options and Tools).

Just click "Encode" when you're done with your settings.

If the encoding fails, try to select "Invert mapping" on the audio tab. (see this post  for the reason of this error)

Now the video is converted to a .flv file, put it in a separate folder. Also, create an image of the first frame of your video, or any other image you want to display in the video player when your video hasn't started playing yet. Make it the same resolution as your video. Save it as a .jpg file, in the same folder as your .flv file.

Download the JW FLV Player for Flash from jeroenwijering.com and unpack the files. Copy or move the files "swfobject.js" and "player.swf" to the folder containing your .flv file.

Use the readme.html as an example for the HTML code you need for the videoplayer and place this code on your website or blog.

More bad news!

Just to show that the downwards spiral in the world economy isn't the only thing happening in the world (as the regular news services seem to think).

Take a look at this website to see all the "disasters" in the world, as they are happening:

Havaria information service

It is based in Hungary, I find it very interesting to see how much is happening in the world, while the regular news is only talking about the elections in the US and all the problems with banks en the economy...

Increasing productivity with RSS readers

Today I decided to find out what all the fuss is about. I found out and this post is me trying to explain this to other people.

Yes, some people might find me a bit slow to catch up. Still, there are many people who have not yet discovered the advantages of RSS readers! (I used to be one of them!)

I often find myself going through my list of bookmarked blogs to see if there are any new posts. Sometimes there aren't even any new posts and I still have to click through all my bookmarks to find out. It takes a lot of time to load all these pages and I'm not even talking about all the mouseclicks.

So, Lately, I have been on a quest of sorts to increase my productivity. This seemed like a very good place to start looking for improvements.

I installed a RSS-reader and subscribed to the feeds of my favorite websites. After some reading and checking around I decided on NetNewsWire.

Now, if I want to check all my bookmarks for new content, I simply click "Refresh All" and all the feeds are checked for new content. This greatly reduces the time I spend to still my hunger for information.

Usually though, I just let it sit in my dock and have it notify me when there are new posts on any of the feeds I'm subscribed to. Currently, I have the check interval set to 30 minutes.

This means I will be interrupted every 30 minutes to read a bit. I might change this interval in the coming days when I get used to working this way.