Ok have a temp phone number in Australia if you need to contact me…
0414 937 603
2015 Now that’s done, what happened and where to now?
So at the beginning of last year I made some resolutions… well not so much resolutions but goals (New Year’s resolutions tend to last only a few hours-days so I don’t do that…)
The …umm.. goals:
- To cut down on Facebook usage.
- Wish a ‘Happy Birthday’ personally not using Facebook.
- Not to sit reading ‘Newfeeds’.
- Not to post when I’m going to the toilet, or blowing my nose.
- To cut down on helping others before looking after myself.
- In past years I have run myself to the point of getting sick taking photos, helping people out, etc.
- This year only doing stuff for people that look after me and are concerned with my health.
- To allow people to join me in my life (share my life) rather than follow everyone else in theirs.
- To treat everyone with the respect and attitude that they treat me (for better or for worse.)
- To cut down the amount of time that I work (for my employer) to something closer to resembling the actual times/hours I am supposed to work (using the hours to look after my family and friends.)
So how did it all go? Well a mix of both success and failure, the easier ones were a complete success, the more difficult and controversial not so much. ie Facebook a no brainer, some took offence, some didn’t realise, some followed suit. Some people treated me with complete disrespect and bad (awful) attitude, but I couldn’t bring myself to return the feelings no matter how much I wanted to.
2015 In Review…
The beginning of the year began with a proposal just a few seconds into the new year… I tried to make it the stroke of midnight but this in reality was never going to happen, so it happened with the first minute of the new year. This I think is how everyone should start a new year… Not a proposal of marriage, but to start it with a happy note: Start in the way which you intend on going on.
I find in my life that no matter how hard you will try to keep everything on a positive note, there will always be those who try and spoil things, there will always be a negative, 2015 was no different. Within a few weeks we (Gabie and I) lost a bunch of friends. Some closer than others. Some didn’t like the fact we were getting married. Some didn’t like to see us happy. Some people just have to ensure everyone else is as miserable as they are in their lives. Some people are just unfathomable and are just better left to wallow in their own self pity. The result was after a great deal of stress and angst Gabie changed jobs to avoid someone who was poisonous in our lives, not to forget she hated the job.
After that little upset was dealt with, Gabie set her heart, with my full support, on pursuing an ambition of hers… To teach again. For this she needed a TELT (Test for English Language Teachers) course to begin the process and in February she took the course, she thoroughly enjoyed it, at least until the exam and the early start preceded by an anxious and therefore sleepless night. We found later, as I expected, she had passed it. We booked the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course so that she may continue with the dream.
Easter was the next point in the year when things happened and fortunately it was also good. We headed to the UK to visit my family, first my mother in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, then later my brother and his family in Mirfield, Leeds. My sister came for Easter Sunday dinner with Mum so Gabie got to meet her then.
The Easter trip was a really good one as we found a great hotel, the Holiday Inn, Leeds-Brighouse… definitely on the list of places to stay! (In fact we went back there at Christmas 2015 – more on that later.)
Next event was Gabie’s course, the May 2015 TEFL course and the resulting certificate (for those successful.) A potentially stressful time, but with the exception of Wedding plans I had managed to remove as many as possible sources of stress for Gabie, and this paid off as she also aced the course and got her certificate.
You’ll note at this point I haven’t mentioned a lot about me or what I have done, well that’s because there is not a lot to tell. After a number of court events the case against the bouncers that had attacked me was dropped because I couldn’t identify him as the attacker (when you’re attacked from behind and kicked in the back of the head it’s a tad difficult to identify the attacker) and it was obvious that he had friends as none of the witnesses – even the police witness – stepped up to identify him and the CCTV footage was mysteriously absent… apparently for the hour when the attack happened… apparently the system malfunctioned… as is often observed when its the staff being prosecuted.
On the work side of things I was not following my goal and was doing many many hours fighting to get things working correctly at the OS level, leaving me to blog a warning about FreeBSD particularly for production use…
So towards the end of May we had good news and bad news in the papers, first was Ireland who became the first country to approve same sex marriage by popular vote. The local papers reported on the problems in Swieqi started happening again, this time not only vandalism but also thieves… and again it was my CCTV video that resulted in the capture… Much to the annoyance of some people, but the residents were very happy which is all that matters.
July would mark one of my few photographic events of the year where I covered XMA 2015, it also marked the ‘full steam ahead’ on the wedding plans. It also made for a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland to visit the good people from ‘Your GP‘ who wrote medical reports that resulted (eventually) in me obtaining my GRC (Gender Recognition Certificate) which also gave me my new Birth Certificate…. all of which was a pre-requisit to getting approved for marriage in Malta.
August went with a blur, and was marred by an insult or two. Won’t go into the details of who here, but suffice it to say, if you’re invited to someone’s Wedding it is polite to either attend or at least say that you can’t. Similarly if you’re invited to a stag or hen night and you don’t want to deliver one of the biggest insults in Malta, you tell people you can’t make it, you don’t just not show up. Lastly for the wedding you don’t tell people you never received the invite “a week before and it was too late” if you’re going to show it to other people who might actually tell the happy couple two-three weeks before!!! Weddings in Malta are a personal thing and the bride side of the event is very very personal.
So September and the wedding itself, well what more is there to say…?
Well quite a lot, but not for this post. Things didn’t go according to our desire, but according to the wedding planners design, despite our being quite specific. The important thing though was we got married, and most of those people important to us were there to witness it.
Our honeymoon took us to Iceland, mainly chosen as a location as its spectacular and very difficult/expensive to get to if you live in Australia.
Iceland was rather different and brought some disappointments, it was very expensive for a lot less… especially considering it is ‘part of Europe’ .. the year before I spent less money on our holiday for more days in the Seychelles than our fleeting visit to Iceland where we seemed to spend all the time driving from place to place. What topped off the whole experience was getting back to Malta and having Europcar Iceland try and accuse us of putting a massive dent in the roof of the car and try to charge us an addition €3500 to have it repaired….! Worst part of the whole ordeal is that we had already read about various rental companies trying this on in Iceland, so we went with Europcar because we figured “Big well known name, will be reputable” … how wrong we were. Result was we informed the bank they had no permission to make such a withdrawal and told them to take us to court. They no doubt figured with me having photos of the vehicle before and after they would end up with a fraud charge in court and I haven’t heard from them since. My advice in all such cases, always get evidence, and always stand your ground. In most countries if you are innocent you can claim all costs associated with a lawsuit (legal fees, flights, hotels etc)…
So skipping to Christmas 2015, for the first time in many years, I did not put up the Christmas decorations, we knew we were going away and the house was a bit of a mess with everything that has been going on renovations wise so figured ‘why bother’. That said, lights went up on the outside of the house, though in a diminished set.
So at the end of 2015, despite haven attended court several times against both defendants, “Sean Borg” and “Xelinu” nothing has progressed, every time the case has been adjourned, quite literally. So I am no further forward in reclaiming either my truck or bike, though I have a new lawyer on the team. For those who have forgotten what this is about… A previous blog entry…
The ARMS saga is still going on, they finally just 3-4 weeks before our wedding decided they want to talk to me about the rates. They had to wait until I got back from honeymoon as I was way too busy to deal, and they agreed I should be on commercial rate but insisted only from the point of the March 2012 telephone call… some 18 months (and €15,000 later.) They have told me that if I supply paperwork on older forms than I have currently found then they will reconsider… I have so far found 8 forms of various different revisions (though plenty from 2011 and 2013) .. and have 3 more boxes of paperwork to review. The problem being there, is that there is half a tonne of concrete slabs in front of the boxes which was supposed to have been removed already.. didn’t stop them threatening to cut the power over Christmas, or adding nearly €300 in ‘other charges’ which in the fine print was for ‘legal services’… next thing for me is to charge them for the legal services relating to the fact they *still* are billing me on the incorrect rate and charging me interest on the invalid bill, and without a credit contract or credit control…. and they have the audacity to threaten me when they are illegally charging fees against an account they have failed to bill. (Note: a judge confirmed my case as stated in December 2013, they are trying to negotiate a change to that judgement.)
Anyhow so there you go 2015 in a nutshell, the only thing I haven’t covered is I’ve changed from doing 70(ish) hours per week for my employer to more like 45 hours per week this has had a *massive* difference… nothing new has been developed by me, my paperwork has been done when other things have gone the wayside, and visa versa. Finally with all the failures of the network most of the time I have had has been wasted trying to fix other peoples’ problems just so I can actually do my job. Good job the service I am responsible for is in my control and not the control of others or the entire service would be long dead and gone by now.
Here’s hoping 2016 will bring more success.
Musings on Copyright theft… well Torrenting and other things…
So here I am in Malta, where the local channels on TV are mostly in Maltese, all two of them (unless you want to include the political ones)… The DVDs and Blu-Ray available are a small selection of what is out there (and none of what I want)… So what’s a girl to do..?
Well 4 years ago I got a Dreambox and pointed the dish at Astra (28.2E)… and got British TV… well until they put Astra 2d up then I had to move to Sky channels (also British) but upon trying to get a Sky card to legitimately pay for what I was watching I was refused… point blank… so I upgraded to a motorised unit and a 1.2m dish and had a look at Europe….. Oh the channels it opened up.. I continued….
Fast forward to Sept 29, 2013 and Astra 2e was launched, and predictably in early 2014 channels started getting migrated to the new satellite… Of course I still can’t buy a card without a UK address (as if I would want to live there with the current political climate!)… So I did the next best thing… Meet “Colossus” my 48T storage server… I started torrenting…..
Not something I wanted to do, but it fit the bill, I was able to watch my favourite TV programs in English, when and where I want… I still watched FTA British TV with the 2.4m dish “upgrade” I treated myself to along with a number of Sky channels including the movie channels using card-sharing…. something I don’t actually want to do, but it is the only option.
Fast forward to March 2015, Astra 2e is put into full service and movie channels and most of the FTA channels are now on the Northern footprint and “sex hotlines” seem to be the order of the day for the European footprint, so now I am virtually completely reliant on Torrents for all my TV and Movies… Guess I finally succumbed to the dark side (well is it really “Dark”? given that I wanted to pay, and I was denied, then after I found a solution, that has been denied now, I went to the “Dark Side” and joined the P2P cloud and now with my 100M Ethernet to the ‘Net’ I share and share alike to see the programs I’m happy to pay for….n Is that really “Dark”…?)
So what’s this post about, well some (DMCA/MPAA idiots) will consider it a confession of a criminal….? Really is it though?
I want a service, I was denied that service, so I found the next best thing, and because it is a “soft” target “illegal” service it was also denied to me by technical means (I’m not going to put a 4.3m dish on the roof!).. so I went to do what everyone else does (you know what they say, “If you can’t beat them, join them!” not because I want to but because it’s my only option… and guess what… it’s better than the “Sky” service I was willing to pay some £70+ per month for!
Now when I want something, I just download it, because it’s a hell of a lot less hassle than flying to the UK to go watch it.
So my message:
Take note DMCA/MPAA/Sky and other providers, if you want to stop the pirates stop making more of them by blocking those who would pay for the service!
Oh and Foxtel, take note: Limiting Grimm and the likes to those who get “Full Subscription” is doing the same thing, people will download it because they *can’t afford* to pay you for your top subscription (and in reality if they only want one particular program, why the f**k would they pay for it?)
Give the people what they want for a reasonable price and pirating will go away… Screw every last $0.01 in profit and people will find alternatives they can afford.
(even Microsoft worked out they couldn’t stop the pirates and in the end it was causing them more trouble than the lost revenue through reputation issues!)
Comments welcome!
Thoughts on the “Spring Hunting” vote..
Lets preface this with the line: I hunt and shoot and would vote “NO” if I could vote…
I will still hunt and shoot even if the “NO” vote wins. Hunting and Shooting as I do takes a lot of skill and is very demanding. My weapon of choice is different from the average hunter though (which is what makes it a lot harder)… Here’s the results of my shooting:
Mark Sultana also shot a few and the Times of Malta posted the results of his hunting… (which if you click the photo you’ll see more and you will see the skill level is so high that when in flight getting the results is significantly more difficult.)
Oddly enough it seems there are many like me that enjoy hunting and shooting, and we can quite legitimately and legally hunt and shoot protected birds as well as non protected birds…
Pity the “YES” vote chooses to show people crossing fields with not a bird in sight, after all isn’t that what they are in favour of?
Pity the “NO” vote feels the need to post all the blood and gore of birds that have been blasted out of the sky being carried by tree huggers and the likes.
Pity the church (which seems to play politics here in Malta on items like Same-Sex marriage whenever it feels like it, yet) don’t seem to care that a “YES” vote means legitimising the killing of God’s Creations FOR FUN….
When it comes to voting on 11 April, don’t vote how people tell you to vote, don’t allow people to tell you how to vote, vote with your conscience… i.e. what you really feel is right, if that means vote “YES” then do it without worry, if that means “NO” then vote “NO”, the point of a referendum is to allow *YOU* to choose for yourself!
(And for those people whom their family and/or friends are being pressured into voting “YES” or “NO” just remember when it comes to voting, it is your choice, tell them what they want to hear, then when you get into the booth, tick the box *YOU* want to vote for. Remember, it’s YOUR vote not THEIRS!)
Converting h.265 (HEVC) to h.264 (AVC)
Quick techie entry for anyone using the newer h265 codecs but unable to use them in players. (eg: Torrenting H265 encoded files then trying to play via PLEX and Roku)
Roku and other media players don’t support h.265 and as such any attempt to play h265 encoded files will result in an ‘Unable to play file’ error, so you might be wanting to convert the files to another format such as h.264. To do this you need ffmpeg, however ffmpeg can be a little difficult to work, especially as it has so many options, so I wrote a little perl script to ‘mass convert’ all files in the current directory if they are h265 encoded to h264 encoding. It is published here for those on UNIX systems (or those who know how to install Perl on Windows) to make life a little easier:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
open DIR, "ls -1 |";
while (<DIR>)
{
chomp;
next if ( -d "$_"); # skip directories
next unless ( -r "$_"); # if it's not readable skip it!
my $file = $_;
open PROBE, "ffprobe -show_streams -of csv '$file' 2>/dev/null|" or die ("Unable to launch ffmpeg for $file! ($!)");
my ($v, $a, $s, @c) = (0,0,0);
while (<PROBE>)
{
my @streaminfo = split(/,/, $_);
push(@c, $streaminfo[2]) if ($streaminfo[5] eq "video");
$a++ if ($streaminfo[5] eq "audio");
$s++ if ($streaminfo[5] eq "subtitle");
}
close PROBE;
$v = scalar @c;
if (scalar @c eq 1 and $c[0] eq "ansi")
{
warn("Text file detected, skipping...\n");
next;
}
warn("$file: Video Streams: $v, Audio Streams: $a, Subtitle Streams: $s, Video Codec(s): " . join (", ", @c) . "\n");
if (scalar @c > 1)
{
warn("$file has more than one video stream, bailing!\n");
next;
}
if ($c[0] eq "hevc")
{
warn("HEVC detected for $file ...converting to AVC...\n");
system("mkdir -p h265");
my @params = ("-hide_banner", "-threads 2");
push(@params, "-map 0") if ($a > 1 or $s > 1 or $v > 1);
push(@params, "-c:a copy") if ($a);
push(@params, "-c:s copy") if ($s);
push(@params, "-c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p") if ($v);
if (system("mv '$file' 'h265/$file'"))
{
warn("Error moving $file -> h265/$file\n");
next;
}
if (system("ffmpeg -xerror -i 'h265/$file' " . join(" ", @params) . " '$file' 2>/dev/null"))
{
warn("FFMPEG ERROR. Cannot convert $file restoring original...\n");
system("mv 'h265/$file' '$file'");
next;
}
} else {
warn("$file doesn't appear to need converting... Skipping...\n");
}
}
close DIR;
Enjoy!