This semester at the local community college, just for the heck of it, I'm taking a criminal justice class (CJ101) along with prep classes for the basic academy at the Orange County Sheriff's Department (or any other academy for that matter). I'm taking CJA010 (Pre-Employment Preparation for Law Enforcement), CJA021 (Laws of Arrest), and CJA040-16 (P.C. 832 Arrest and Firearms). All three of the CJA classes are short (3-4 weeks) and graded solely on attendence - there's no reason for you to be taking them unless you wanted to be there. We had our first classroom meetings earlier this week where we were introduced to the downsides of law enforcement along with being able to talk to a recent academy graduate. But today was the fun class. Class began at 7am at the basic academy grounds in Garden Grove where we first went over some basics about the testing procedure and then we actually got to run the obstacle course, pick-up and drag the dummy, push a car, and then run a quarter mile. All of those events are scored and you need 700 points to pass the test and make it into the academy (of course, there's also academic tests you have to pass as well).

My first try on the obstacle course, I ran into a problem with the 6' wall that has to be jumped over (it's actually 6'5" - as the OC Sheriff's goes a bit overboard on everything), but after a couple attempts, I made it over without a problem. I stayed after class and had a few more tries on it and had no other problems, so I figure it was just nerves the first time going over - my instructor said I was just thinking too much. After that, we did the dummy drag which wasn't a big problem, though my time wasn't perfect, it was quite acceptable and then we moved on to the car push - we pushed a full car while in neutral 10 feet. To score the max points on the car push, you have to do it in 4.0 seconds. While attempting it today, I did it in 5.7 seconds, which our instructor said we could knock a second off of because his car was full with gear and the car used in the test is much lighter (as confirmed by two people in the class who had already tested before for the academy).

Then came the quarter mile run which has a target time of 1 minute, 6 seconds for max points - which I completed in 1 minute, 10 seconds. I can easily knock 4 seconds off that through some training (I usually jog, so I'm not that good at short sprints). So with the 200 max points from the run and 50 points from the trigger pull, I've already got 1/4 of the total points possible and over 1/3 of the points needed to get into the academy. Today, even with my problems at the wall, when all was said and done, I scored 787 points out of 1,000. 700 are needed to pass the physical testing portion. As for the written tests, I forsee no problems. The two guys I overheard talking about the tests said the hardest part was spelling - which I could easily ace. So it's good to know that I could get into the academy - and I should be able to score much higher after these classes and now knowing what exactly I should be stressing in my training.

As for the home networking experience, I got the MAME computer converted to the MCE and went out and bought a remote for it at Fry's (which works quite well). I'm still having to transfer files via our old wireless network, so it skips from time to time, but that will be fixed with ethernet cables run directly to the computer. Another problem I'm having is VLC seems to stutter from time to time not due to network problems, so I'm going to see what other programs my remote works with and see how they work on the MCE. I originally went with VLC because I thought I would need to have a server and client set up to stream the videos, but I'm having no problems just sharing the drive via Windows Networking, so the files show up normally in explorer and any program can be used to run them. I think I just need one that has a configurable buffer to control the skipping.

URL: Basic Academy

Well, the testing pretty much confirmed what I already knew - ripping with DVD Decrypter and converting with AutoGK will pretty much give me the same output every time. I fooled around with the settings and output four different files and they all came out the same (more or less). All three of the percentage files came out at 464 megs (85%, 90%, and 95%) and the three other compression tests I did came out at a worse quality at 400 megs (700 meg target size, 900 meg target size, quarter DVDR (1120 meg) target size). So I've confirmed what I already knew, so it's either stick with DVD Decrypter + AutoGK or go to a much more complicated routine for each and every episode. I'm probably going to stick with this output, but I won't be ripping any more until I get the MAME computer converted to MCE.

URL: Spooks - Episode Guide - TV Tome

What a shame - I mean...really...I feel sorry for Michael Moore.

Mel Gibson's religious blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ" missed out on main categories, but did pick up nominations for cinematography, makeup and original score.

Michael Moore's gamble to hold his hit film "Fahrenheit 9/11" out of the documentary category - to boost its best-picture prospects - backfired. The movie was shut out across the board.

Oh wait - no I don't. Michael Moore can take his propaganda and go live in France or wherever they'll take him and his lies.

URL: My Way News

I'm still trying to figure out how exactly I want to store/encode these videos, and as such, I'll probably be running some more tests tonight. Season 1 of MI-5 ended up with 6 episodes weighing in at 2.86GiB (compressed from 15.8GiB). Anyhoo...the videos look ok, but at a full 17", artifacts can be seen, though I am quite close to my 17" monitor. I'll probably run some tests, setting a target size, trying 90% instead of 85% (maybe even 95% - though it made no difference with Viva La Bam) and then try another alternative tomorrow if nothing works - perhaps XviD isn't the way to go.

I really need to get the MAME computer converted to MCE so I can see how the files look on an actual TV rather than here on my desktop on my monitor which runs at a much higher resolution that any TV in the house.

URL: Spooks - Episode Guide - TV Tome

After a good 24 hours of compressing files, as mentioned below, I now have MI-5: Season 2 ready to be served up across the network. After using the computer in another room to test the shares, I wasn't too impressed with the compression. I have all of the settings the same (most notably the 85% target quality in AutoGK), yet the file sizes don't change too much. Viva La Bam episodes weigh in at about 480 megs a piece, yet they're only 20 minutes long while 20 minute long Seinfeld episodes are about 230 megs in size. What doesn't make sense to me is how the MI-5 episodes come in right around 500 megs a piece - they're 60 minutes long. So we have 60 minute episodes at 500 megs a piece while Viva La Bam 20 minute episodes are about 480 megs. Now, I realize that different encoding methods will produce different file sizes based on the 85% target quality, but this is kind of annoying. Luckily, I haven't invested too much time into the project and the ripping can be done again quite easily, but I'm not sure of the way I want to go. I think I want to stick with XviD encoding, however, it'd be nicer if I could get a set size per minute (e.g. every 20 minutes takes up about 400 megs) - so Viva La Bam would be 400, Seinfeld would be 400 and MI-5 would be 1.2 gigs. I guess I still have some testing to do and I might do it after MI-5: Season 1 finishes encoding, but we'll see how they turn out size and quality wise.

The problem I'm running into here is that AutoGK was made primarily for movie compression and while it does work with episodic compression, there are problems as mentioned above. I really would like to stream this to another computer, hooked up to a tv, to see how it looks exactly. I just need to run some CAT5 into the den and get my MAME computer up and running again and I should be able to see how it would look through any other media center PC. As it stands now, I can probably take my old server computer (which had a hard drive die), throw in a new hard drive (I have a spare 20 gig sitting around), throw in the TV-SERVE hard drive and hook that up as a dedicated media server (copy over my MP3s as well) - thereby freeing up my computer here for regular use.

Plans (for my reference) - get server computer working and rechristen as TV SERVER. Get MAME computer working and rechristen as MCE in den with CAT5 running to it (as the previous MAME computer, it already has S-Video TV outs and the new TV in the den is ready to receive said output. Upgrade home network. Pre-N networking would be awesome as it would make it much easier to stream video without having to use CAT5. As it stands now, the wireless network is pretty weak and unable to handle full-on video streaming. Buy an Xbox, modchip & remote to convert to another MCE...

URL: Spooks - Episode Guide - TV Tome

Just for my own reference later, the second season of MI-5 (a.k.a. Spooks) compressed from 24.2 to 4.95 gigs for 10 episodes.

Next up: Simpsons & MI-5: Season 1.

URL: "Spooks" (2002)