My First Dvd

A couple of friends of mine got married recently. A friend of theirs had given them a powerpoint and they wanted it to be on DVD so the hall could play it on the large screen. I went ahead and offered to do the transition. Let me tell you it was a bit more work than I expected, mainly because I was trying to get it going with a regular CD/burner and the open source tools all let me down.

I mainly tried qdvdauthor and DVD Flick to try and get it going. While they are both nice and I made and burned ISO's, neither worked. Now to be fair, I was using regular CD's, and I think my player may be at fault. I also used dvd-slideshow to make the pictures into a video. The main problem with dvd-slideshow was that the AC3 didn't work. It could probably be a gentoo issue that I should look at, but for now I'm a bit sick of it.

So on the day of the wedding, I broke down and bought a DVD-R drives, some recordable DVDs, and the package came with the Nero 7 tool suite. It's a memorex drive for $45. Memorex is a decent brand, it was the cheapest, and it came with software, all big pluses. In like 20 minutes I had it going, so I'm happy with it. The drive is a bit noisy, but any CD drive that really spins up usually is. Overall though, I'm a bit happy. I made some assumptions and mistakes with the audio, but it worked out. I think I'll definitely have to look into doing DVD Christmas cards this year, it will be a hoot I think.

Politicians and Religion

I have been midly watching the Presidential canidates to see who's out there. I think if we want anything to change, grassroot movements need to start supporting canidates early to have a fighting chance of them winning the primaries and being a real contender. While I was googling I came across a page by Wesley Clark and I was struck how he just doesn't get Religion. Here's a quote from http://www.beliefnet.com/story/137/story_13791_1.html

"I'm spiritual. I'm religious. I'm a strong Christian and I'm a Catholic but I go to a Presbyterian Church. Occasionally I go to the Catholic church too. I take communion. I haven't transferred my membership or anything. My wife I consider ourselves---she considers herself a Catholic."

Okay, now If you ARE a Catholic, then you have made a free choice to submit yourself to your bishops who say you MUST go to Mass EVERY WEEK. Nothing says you have to be a Catholic (I personally think everyone should be, but that's another issue), but if you are, I mean really are, then you need to be one. I know plenty of families who are of two different Christian faiths and they go to BOTH to support each other and would never miss their own service. Now, the fact that she's Catholic too makes you wonder why he would ever skip the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Any Real Catholic should know something happens there that only happens in Catholic and Orthodox churches.

The next beef I have is on this line. "I take communion." First, most Catholics inherently say they receive. You don't take Jesus, He is God, He is in control. So there's another interior theological concept missing. I think most simple Mexican mothers I know (And there's lots of devout ones, simple faith at it's finest), who would say that just because that's how you always hear it in Catholic Circles. But the second is that he uses it as proof he's "Catholic OK" or something. Anyone can go up in line and receive, question is does he know if he should or not.

Anyways, that's my rant and I need to go. I'll have to post more on other Canidates and my view on this soon.