It feels good to be at the top, this list of top 10 stolen cars shows that my car, is quite simply the most awesome car ever created. Statistically I have the greatest chance of getting my car stolen, as long as you don’t factor in any geographically specific data. I feel sorry for the poor fool that steals my car, and finds out later much to his chagrin, that there is no warning beep when you leave the headlights on and get out of the car! Ha, sucker. But seriously, I have some sweet wheels, except for the whole smashed in bumper and trunk thing.

View the rest of the photos.

Becca, Megan, and I all hit the road early Sunday morning to get up to Mount Bierstadt, which is west of Denver, and generally rated as one of the “easier” fourteeners to hike in Colorado. We now understand that ratings such as Easy, Moderate, and Strenuous are all completely relative. Firstly, in relation to all other hiking that doesn’t bring you to the top of a very tall mountain, these trails are extremely difficult. In relation to a persons physical fitness, the difficulty rating of these mountain trails can slide quite a bit. And last but not least, the weather is certain to have a significant impact on the level of difficulty for any trail.

The weather today was very, very, bad. If there had been thunderstorms, with lightning we would have turned around and gone back down. But there was no lighting so we decided to press on, even when the clouds closed in on top of us only 3/4 of the way to the top of this 3.5 mile trek. It was rainy, wet, and muddy the entire day because of the unusually high amounts of precipitation we have gotten the past week. But then, we encountered a slow steady soaking downpoar at the most difficult part of the trail before the summit. Our trail quickly became a fast flowing creek, going against us. And then the rain started to freeze. By the time we actually reached the summit of the mountain our feet and hands were soaked and frozen. The temperature drop was really quite amazing. I wish I had a thermometer along to confirm what I suspect, that it was around 30-40 degrees at the top of that mountain.

The views on the way up and down were spectacular, but it was almost impossible to see anything other than the 100 foot circle of unforgiving granite boulders that were not obscured by the cloud we were in. It was still hiking, but with a lot of scrambling. I think the weather was a bad for this hike as it could get without being bad enough to make us turn back.

So, we accomplished what we had set out for, and summited our first fourteener. Despite mother nature’s best efforts to slow us down.

Sometimes you just need to rip the video off of a DVD into a high quality and usable format, such as an AVI. Probably for further editing, or compression. Sometimes a client delivers some video to you on a DVD-R and sometimes you might need to excercise your fair use rights on some retail DVD content. When I was figuring out how to do this I couldn’t find any clearly written step by step guides to getting raw video off a DVD, this is that guide. Complete with links to the software you need.

Step 1: Decrypting

If your DVD is encrypted, meaning pressed by a movie distributer, containing copyrighted material, you might need some software like DVD Shrink (if that link goes down just google it). Using DVD Shrink you can make unencrypted copies on DVD-R’s andalso just output the .vob files directly to your hard-drive. This is the prefferred method if you will only be creating and AVI file from the DVD.

Step 2: Software and Codecs

If you are getting video off of an _un_encrypted DVD, or if you have now made your unecrypted copy of the encrypted DVD things start with a program called VirtualDubMod. So Install VirtualDub Mod, then install the high-quality video codec you want to output to, I suggest the Panasonic DV codec. DV files are the same format as the files you get from capturing from a MiniDV tape, the format that most decent Video Cameras use. So this file type will work well with most compression programs and NLE (Non-Linear Editor) software packages. Also, DVD audio is usually in AC3 format so you will need the AC3 ACM codec.

Step 2: Ripping

Once all 3 of these are installed, insert your unecrypted DVD into the DVD drive, or make sure your .vob files are on the hard-drive somewhere. Then start VirtualDubMod and click “open video file”, browse the the appropriate .vob files either on the DVD-R or on your hard-drive. These files go in series, you may want to view by details and see which of the files are megabytes and gigabytes in size, these are the ones you want to open. I think each chapter of the DVD is a seperate file, the first one is usually VTS_01_1.vob. Open this file and VDubMod will spend a few minutes parsing the file. Then you can use the controls to watch the video, ensuring you have the corect file loaded. Go to the Video -> Filters, click “Add” Choose “resize” from the list and click OK. Set the width in that new dialog box to 720 and height to 480 and click OK. Click File -> Save As…, at the very bottom of the save dialog it should say something like “(Uncompressed RGB)” click change and select “Panasonic DV CODEC”, click OK. Save the file where you want it, and boom, your video will start ripping. When it’s done, which takes about the same amount of time as it takes to play the video file, depending on your processor speed, you will have an unencrypted high quality DV avi file for all your editing and compression needs.

Hope this helps, I know I spent quite a bit of time trying to hunt this information down before figuring this process out. Note: Most of the software you will need for working with video like this can be found at Doom9.net.