Amalthia's recs and fan works

This weekend I spent far too much time trying to figure out how to automate some tasks in Calibre. Normally I have to use Bulk edit metadata to remove all my tags, then select stories one by one to add a cover, especially if I have a group of stories from various fandoms.

What I learned this weekend fixed all of that and I posted my findings at fanfic_ebooks

Calibre FFDL Plugin - Replace Metadata and Generate Cover automatically

Lately, I've been kind of complaining to friends about how often I have to use ?style=mine to read fics because most journal layouts are not reader friendly. And it hit me that maybe most LJ users don't realize that there is way to post stories so they are more reader friendly.

anyway, if you want to make your fics more reader friendly you go to this link

http://www.livejournal.com/customize/options.bml

and find "Disable customized comment pages for your journal" and select Yes.

For most LJ layouts this will make it so that if someone hits the cut tag on a fic it'll open and people can read the story on a white background with black text, which is easier on the eyes. I think some layouts don't require this.

I got Supernatural on DVD for X-Mas. I went to play the pilot commentary on my computer (which runs windows XP) and the dvd drive won't recognize the disk. At first I thought maybe my disk is messed up so I tried it on my Windows 2000 laptop and well the DVD plays fine.

I tested other DVDs on my desktop computer and they run just fine. However except for disk 5 of my set none of my dvds will run on my computer. I have no clue what is going on here. I don't want to take them back for an exchange if i'm going to have the same problems tomorrow night as well. :(

I'd really appreciate any and all advice on this matter.

I'm in love. I just downloaded the new Media Studio Pro 8.0 and I've been playing with the program for the last two hours. I love this program, creating libraries for my media files is easy, the interface isn't confusing, great help contents, it also allows you to create more editing tracks (though why I care about this I don't know??? I don't think I'll ever do more than one overlay at a time) Right now I already created a library for Supernatural season 1, Atlantis season 1 and 2, and what I love about this is that the libraries collapse when you're not using one, which means I can store all my media files for various shows into their own directories. With Ulead Video Studio 9...once you read the 40 library limit that's it...you have to delete something to create more room. Which really sucks if you want to make vids for two or three different fandoms and want to have clips from every episode avaible to choose from. :) There are a lot of fandoms I want to vid in still like Buffy, Farscape, BSG...Lost (maybe?) I think the only limit is how much harddrive space I have. :(

Another thing I love about the library set up is that it scrolls better and you can expand the window. there is a lot of flexiblity. It's not as user friendly as Ulead Video Studio but it's better than Media Studio Pro 7.0 which I gave up trying to figure out.

Anyway while I split scenes again for all these episodes I'm working on my sga_santa fic....I'm giving myself until Friday to finish so that away I have time to beg someone to beta read it for me and it will give this poor unfortunate person at least 4 days to grammar check. That's my goal...now if I reach it or not???

Today is a good day. I went to bed around 5 am and because a really big thunder and lighting storm came through it stayed Dark outside until around 2pm when the storm passed over. Which meant I got to sleep until noon at which point even I couldn't still sleep through lighting and thunder close enough to feel the vibrations from inside the apartment.

What really amazed me is that the power didn't go out. My husband thinks the US is a backwards nation because when he grew up in Belgium apparently they NEVER had power outages. Go Belgium. He thinks power outages are something third world nations experience because they lack technology or money. I'm glad he's not going to apply for US Citizenship. Not sure if he could fake national pride enough to pass the exam. :)

Just finished installing Pinnacle Studio 9.4, it's much better than 9.0 because at least I can load avi files now. All I have to do now is see if I can edit the files.

Well today should be fun, I'm going to spend some time experimenting with this program. :)