The pilot for an American TV show called Greek was a free download on Apple iTunes recently. I’m just as eager as the next open source software developer to brainlessly give a try to free stuff, so I checked it out. The show centers around some participants in the Greek-lettered fraternity and sorority system present on many college campuses. Hazing plays a role.
This caused me to consider FFmpeg and the Google Summer of Code in the context of fraternities. GSoC is a college activity, like the Greek system. Participation might help your career along, post-school (an alleged rationale for joining a fraternity). And if you want to be initiated into the FFmpeg brotherhood, you are required to submit to a ritual known as the qualification task.
This would be a good time to mention that FFmpeg has been accepted into the GSoC for a third year in a row. Students who have any interest in working on a summer FFmpeg project on Google’s dime need to make their interest known on the ffmpeg-devel list and publicly claim a qualification hazing ritual.
Also, it seems that the x264 project wants in on some of the GSoC action, as indicated by their new adjunct Wiki page. This only creates ever more exciting opportunities. Wouldn’t you like to be a part?
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Was that greek an attempt to break my tongue? I find it quite unkind to write something that can’t be pronounced, because I tend to try anyway ;-)
It’s actually a letter by letter transliteration of “FFmpeg”. I should have put the green zigzag scan pattern in front to make it more obvious.
I didn’t think of doing it letter by letter. Well, at least you didn’t do it like some stupid movie trailers that use the greek letter that looks the most like the latin one… (meaning the use mu for an u, rho for a p etc. Truly confusing to read for anyone who actually knowns the greek letters). ;-)
Good with Greek letters? Can you solve the Greek letter puzzle in this kids’ game? http://games.multimedia.cx/disneys-hades-challenge/
And it’s ironic you should complain about the spurious transliterations in media titles since the show “Greek” has a logo in which the two ‘e’s are actually capital sigma letters (“GrΣΣk”), which would transliterate to GrSSk.
Well, I would know which side is up for Greek letters (honestly, after taking a few semesters of maths courses you should be able to write almost all Greek letters, and maybe even the Hebrew Aleph).
Though that is the kind of puzzle that drives me crazy, I would have never guessed that whether the letters are this or that way around would matter. But maybe I just have been sitting at the opposite side of the table too often during school group assignment (thus usually reading the books the wrong way round) ;-)
Either way, have a nice long Easter weekend everyone (assuming it is actually a long weekend for you).
About Easter: Nope, this is America. Easter is Sunday and it’s back to work on Monday (although some places have today off). Same for Google, which is why the student application period opens on Monday.