Thanks again to all the Denver-area folks who came out to see my presentation at the CLUE meeting. I had a great time and, judging by the reaction to all the cheesy multimedia clips, it looks like you all did, as well. Here is a redux of the intro clip:

That’s right! It’s Lopez– Lopez, the narcotics king. Remember: He has the mansion, he has the money, he has the drugs, he has the POWER. To say nothing of the receding hairline. It turns out that Digital Leisure still has the MPEG trailer for this game (Drug Wars) on their downloads page. Check out the whole thing. Always a crowd pleaser!

Just FYI, any other Colorado-area Linux/computer groups who would like a fun presentation on multimedia technology (complete with silly multimedia clips), just drop me an email. Have computer and projector, will travel. I always enjoy doing these talks (in fact, just try to get me to shut up about multimedia technology).

I will be doing a presentation about multimedia technology soon. If you are in Denver, CO, USA, or a nearby area, check out my “Multimedia on Linux” presentation for the Colorado Linux Users And Enthusiasts (CLUE) group near the Denver Tech Center. Tuesday, March 8, free to the public. The group congregates around 6:30pm, my presentation is at 7:00pm. See their website for more details and specific directions and maps.

Slacked off in the posting for a little while there. But you will be comforted to know that I always have at least a half-dozen articles in development for this blog.

According to the aggregated site statistics, “vp62 codec” is, far and away, the top search string that drives people to this site. “vp61 codec” brings up a distant second. This tells me that people are actually interested in On2’s VP6 line of codecs even though I may not encounter much media in those formats. If you are interested in the codec format, RE efforts on the Java modules are proceeding slowly and tediously.

People actually subscribe to this blog via RSS. Fun to know.

This blog is also well on its way to hijacking key food concepts. Another search string driving traffic to the site is “making omelettes”.

On a recent visit to the FlatIron Crossing in Colorado, the first thing that greeted me was a large, hanging widescreen television with a PC BIOS start up screen imploring the user to remove any system disks and press any key to boot the computer. Another hanging screen nearby showed a Windows XP login screen. These screens were scattered throughout the shopping center and luckily, many of them were showing what they were supposed to be showing, I suppose. The regular presentation was some rather choppy video that made me wonder if the video stream was being piped in via a constrained 115Kbit/sec serial cable.

I do not even want to guess how much it cost to deploy dozens of these widescreen, flat-panel monitors all over the building, or what the underlying justification was. And how are they administered? Is there actually one PC driving each monitor? I understand that 1 PC driving the whole show would be unappealing as all the monitors would be in complete sync for an eerie, techno-dystopian effect. Perhaps 1 PC is driving 3-5 monitors?

Then there is the potential for misuse. I hope the back office with the PCs is well-secured. The program running these video files ad nauseum could probably be easily subverted to show anything. One unlocked door and a prankster with a CD-ROM of some choice cuts from the internet “adult content” community could turn family-friendly shopping on its ear.

Then again, perhaps the video streams are being transmitted via DSL from some central office, hence the quality.

Now that I think about it, I was probably paying more attention to the multitude of monitors than any other patron in the entire mall.