Steve Deakin's Weblog

SlySoft publish “AnyDVD” and “AnyDVD HD” for accessing and copying DVDs and Blu-Ray disks by defeating the copy protection mechanisms.

SlySoft is based in Antigua thus avoids penalties under the DCMA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) 1998, the CDPA (Copyright, Designs and Patents Act) 1988 and other similar legislation in other parts of the world.

SlySoft are currently ahead of the arms race between protection circumvention and content protection.

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I use Windows and Linux interchagably so I like to choose open source toolsets that run on both platforms (I also find that Linux apps are generally also available on Mac OS X so that’s cool).

Miro is now my favourite video player (Xine has been deprecated in my A-List).

It supports all the video formats I use (Flash Video, AVI, H.264, Windows Media, Quicktime and MPEG), searches YouTube and Google Video, and allows downloads.

The only downside is the arms race between Miro and YouTube for enabling and disabling the download facility respectively but that is OK if you keep your version of Miro up to date.

You can get Miro here: Get Miro

I am putting my public booklist on the LibraryThing and including a couple of widgets in the sidebar.

It is a great tool for when I am asked about what I am currently reading.

Aerial photography is great but sometimes the technology used to deliver it makes it clumsy to access.

http://www.flashearth.com/ gives direct access to the images and the ability to switch between the providers such as Microsoft or Google to get the best image for the location you are looking for.