Viewing video in an image?

• The Magic Color Out of space (shameless H.P.Lovecraft reference)

A while back there was a blog post about this but when I tried to search for it it turned up with broken images and for some reason the Author had put the color codes etc in the images so I had to back engineer the way he did it to get the contents of this post.. Anyway, I figured it would be a neat trick to be able to play video in the background of my text editors when I was working on something. (Don't ask me why, I just get these kinds of ideas sometimes.)



The principle behind it is that when playing a video in a player like VLC Media Player the hardware renders a one colored image that the video is then overlayed on, this is why problems occur when you try to make a Print screen screenshot of something in the video. The screenshot is of the overlayed one colored image instead of the video. There are ways around this but it isn't the topic of this post.



Now I was thinking, what if I could use this color to do some neat tricks.



Enter:

• The video everywhere mode

Now this color is a very simple color (at least in VLC Media Player, haven't tried it in other players). Its color coordinates are #000001 or Red 0 Green 0 Blue 1.

You can easily get this color by simply taking a print screen screenshot of video playing.



But how is this useful? Since I'm writing a lot (it's one of my main hobbies), I figured: If I could play a video in the background of the text editor and still be able to work with the text I could have some real fun with this.



Enter:

• The Text Editor Trick

Now since in editors like Notepad2 and SciTE you can define your own background color I figured I could have some real fun with it. (this also works in other programs where you can set your background color to a custom color. like IRC clients etc).



The basic idea, In either Notepad2 or SciTE is to change the background color to the color #000001 you can easily do this yourself (for a simple description  on how to change the background in SciTE check out my earlier post, and for Notepad2 I recommend switch to the second default color scheme and edit the background color)



Now that we have the background color set we can play around with VLC Media Player a bit. Since the Media player has a Wallpaper mode it already uses this technology so getting it to work is piece of cake. Just make sure you can play the video in Wallpaper mode and you should be all set.



Open the video in VLC Media Player and resize the window to fit your text editor window, then just minimize the media player and the video should still be visible.



If you have trouble with seeing the text over the video try changing your font color around a bit or got to Settings > Extended GUI in VLC Media Player and change the hue, saturation and contrast around a bit and you should be able to get a good clean image while still being able to see your video.

• How is this usefull?

I haven't got the faintest idea, it's a cool trick but it can be a bit distracting. But since we can have wallpapers at our desktops why not wallvideo as well. It's a fun trick and it demonstrates some of the fun you can have with the video technology that is available for free on the net.

Multiplication Trick Video

Easy Graphical Multiplication Trick Video

This is a fun and easy way of solving multiplication without having to use a calculator. Once you grasp it you can solve almost all forms of multiplication simply by drawing some lines.
Watch how it's done, very simple, lowtech way of of doing it, but it works wonders.

Scite Colours, when the white is too white

I decided to write about the changes I made in SciTE to not strain my eyes as much as the white background did. So lets start off by making the whole background black shall we:

In SciTE press the options button -> Open Global Options file

The hit Ctrl + F and write this in:
style.*.32

When you locate it it looks kind of like this:
style.*.32=$(font.base)

I will list the settings I did to change it to a black background instead.
style.*.32=$(font.base),back:#000000,fore:#ffffff
caret.fore=#FFFFFF

Hit Ctrl + S and viola, you now have a black screen instead of that eye piercing white one. Make sure to poke around with the other settings found in this file aswell, just click the Help -> SciTE help drop down menu to be taken to a very good list of what most of the options here do.

Must say that I love the SciTE editor just as much as Firefox because they are both highly coustomizable.

Trues quote ever:

"Computers don't do what you want them to do, only what you tell them to do." - 2003 Chris Pine

Learning Ruby the fun way

This is the really fun way to learn Ruby it is an interactive guide and console available freely on the web.
Make sure you allow javascripts on the page otherwise the console won't work.

No get going, you are not going to regret it, Ruby is fun!!

Lets see if this works,

I'm trying to embed a video, hopefully it will work.

Hot Video ftw!

Ack.. I have a weakness, good music coupled with a sexy video. Check this out.

Another very usefull Extension for Firefox

ScrapBook :: Firefox Add-ons



This is yet another really useful extension for Firefox, what it does is that it allows you to save pages in just a click or two. It also allows you to insert your own highlights and comments.

An absolute necessity for the web based researcher, blogger etc.



I'm so early in my blogging career but I have found a direct value of it as it allows me to save blogposts of interest without me having to dig back in archives etc.



Best thing about it is that the whole page is saved on your computer, some bloggs and posts have a habit of disappearing. This way you have total control over it.



The storage is a simple to use folder structure where you can organize your saved pages.

The whole universe at your fingertips

SKY-MAP.ORG



This is an exellent map of the sky freely available on the web, I must say that as a hobby stargazer it is very comfortable to use yet still holds a lot of good info.



Take a look, you'd be amazed at what you can find out there.