The people that brought us VLC, the simple Swiss Army Knife of video players annonced a few days ago that they are working on VLMC (VideoLAN Movie Creator). Their goal is for it to be a free video editor for semi-professional videos that has a simple interface. Oh and it will be multi platform for you Mac, Linux and Windows fans. SO far the videos and screenshots are very promising for their pre-alpha work.

I just built a new desktop over last month to this one and here is what I have.

MSI P45NE02 Motherboard
Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66 GHz Processor
4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800 Mhz RAM
MSI GeForce 210 512MB GPU
350 PSU
Ubuntu 9.10 64bit

Mobo & CPU: $150
RAM: $70
GPU: $25 After Rebate
PSU: Reused one I got for $25 two years ago
Case: Reused an old PII case I like.
HD: Reused 80GB Maxtor PATA drive I got for $40 a while back
DVD-RW Drive : Reused PATA drive I got 4 years ago.

Next month I will purchase a SATA HD for $50 or less.

But the total that came out of pocket for this build is: $245
I like to see what I can build on the low end when I build machines.

Have you ever wanted to apply your own custom themes to sites such as Google or Facebook? Well there are several options for you to do so. In this post I am going to cover the use of the Stylish Add-on for Mozilla Firefox.

1. If you don't have Firefox [Get it at this link!]

2. Get the Stylish Add-On. Click Add to Firefox and install. A restart of Firefox will be required for the Add-on to complete the installation.

3. Go to userstyles.org. There you can search for and select styles to install with Stylish. You can also use most of these scripts with Greasemonkey, IE7 or Opera but Stylish offers the ability to modify these styles if you like.

4. When you have found a user style that you like simply select the install with stylish button and press the install button on the widow that appears.

Here is an example of what the author page for Facebook - Dark Static page looks like using Stylish:

Some of the Lady's may prefer Facebook - Dark Shiny Purple:

There are styles for numerious pages out there so find ones that you like. If you are adventures you can even make themes of your own

So you either hate the new Facebook set up or want more control over what updates and links you view. Facebook actually has several ways to customise what you see by default.

I have seen several posts telling how to set it so you see news feeds by default which works well unless you also want to see friends links.

To see your friends activity go to the navigation table on the left and click More. Then select Create New List. Then add all friends whose updates you want to see. When done select Create List. Now while the left menue is expanded left click and drag your new list to the top of the menue and drop it there. You will now see updates from those friends as default.

Unfortunantly you will still see the new updates added such as people becoming friends but it will be limited to the friends on your list. If you want to only see status updates under the expanded menue drag and drop Status Updates to the top. You can also alternate between lists by simply selecting them.

I hope this helps a few of youthat want a little more control over what you see by default.

The HackMii folks have pushed out an update to HBC 1.0.6, just open the HBC or grab the updated installer to get the new version.

Release Notes: HBC v1.0.5 freezes. Like forever. But only for some users. Fixed that, and some other minor hiccups. Launch HBC to update it. Or grab fresh installer. BootMii and DVDX unchanged.

Really it's a maintenance update and doesn't introduce any new features but for those few that have experienced freezing I imagine this would be cool.

I've received a ton of tips reporting that the recently released Wii Menu Update 4.2 has killed their console. The update was a lame attempt to remove homebrew applications from modded consoles, providing users with the following warning:

"Because unauthorized modifications to save data or program files may impair game play or the Wii console, updating to Wii Menu version 4.2 will also check for and automatically remove such save data or program files."

However, a number of Nintendo forumites are complaining the update has bricked their completely unmodified Wiis. Many of these complaints are being deleted off of the Nintendo boards.

This problem can be traced to the fact that the update makes changes to the Wii's all-important bootloader. If any problems arise during installation, the bootloader becomes corrupt, and the Wii becomes incapable of loading any software. A Nintendo technician has responded to the reports, saying anyone who's experienced these problems on their totally legit hardware can send it in for free repairs. So at least that is offered.

In the mean time, you should stay away from installing Update 4.2. Unless, of course, you're using a modded console that has the mods updated. In that case, you most likely have your system backed up and can restore it easily and/or have an updated version of Bootmii installed which can circumvent this.

For those who don't know the Homebrew Channel is a channel for launching Wii homebrew applications without the need to run the Twilight Hack first. It will list apps stored and organised on an SD card in a nice little GUI.

Today I recieved an update for the Homebrew Channel which added some features and also gave me the option for installing Bootmii and DVDx.

DVDx allows the play of DVD's on the Homebrew Channel. Adding support that Nintendo doesn't want to offer.

Bootmii is an interesting replacement for the normal system menu that loads. Right now it basically gives support for loading the Homebrew Channel, loading the regular system menu and backing up your entire Wii's software. It is an interesting project that has huge possibilities for the future as Bootmii allows direst access to all of the Wii's hardware. It would be interesting to see what all could be ported now.

Bootmii Screenshot:

Some of the new features of the Homebrew Channel itself are:

If you looked at that case and said it looks like it's made of Hemp... well you would be right. I saw it tonight and had to buy it. I recently listened to a speech at a Libertarian Party meeting about industrial hemp and it's uses and wished it was legal to grow in the US for textile, paper and ethanol use.

WinFF

Ever need a program to convert a video file for your PSP, iPod, gaming console or just about any device? WinFF is a GUI for the command line video converter, FFMPEG. WinFF can convert multiple files in multiple formats at one time. You can for example convert mpeg's, flv's, and mov's, all into avi's for a video device all at once. One of the great things about WinFF is it's available for Windows 95, 98 , ME, NT, XP, VISTA, and Debian, Ubuntu and Redhat based GNU/Linux distributions. How many programs are still available for ALL of those platforms? It works great on them all.

On the technical side WinFF is open source and cross platform written in Free Pascal and Lazarus. WinFF is published under the GNU public license. Being that is Open Source it is real free software with no adware bundled in.

To download or find more information on WinFF go to the WinFF website: WinFF.org

Screenshots of the clean and straight forward WinFF interface:

Windows XP	Ubuntu 9.04