Here’s the simple way:

Install the XCode apply developer tools @ http://connect.apple.com/

Install Macports @ http://www.macports.org/install.php

Run “sudo port install ffmpeg” in a terminal.

It’ll go off and download lots of stuff, and when finished, ffmpeg will be ready to roll.

I tend to take the easy option when using it:

ffmpeg -i file.avi -sameq file.mp4

-i is the input file, -sameq makes the quality the same, and then you stick the filename that you want to generate at the end. So I’m converting file.avi with the same quality to an MPEG-4 file called file.mp4 with that example above.

I’m sorry to say that I’ll probably be posting a bit more about the iPad for the next few days.

So why have things been better? Well, clearly there’s absolutely no proof about this reason, but it’s a hell of a coincidence if it is unrelated. Quite simply, I’ve been getting fitter. Initially through running, then I got my new road bicycle, and then I started playing football again.

There’s not a chance I could have played football before I started running in January. My balance problems were not massively bad, but certainly bad enough to prevent me thinking about playing. The running, for some reason, made the balance problems pretty much disappear.

Cycling has also been pretty good and is keeping me fitter in different areas. I’ve started cycling to work again, it’s only 11km and I can get to work faster on my bike than I can in my car.

Football, well I’ve only played about three times in a couple of months because I managed to injure my left knee when playing one day, apparently three people decided to tackle me at once; but if you don’t get out there and try things, then what’s the point of living. I realised that the balance had improved, so decided to try football a shot again, and what do you know, the balance has either improved, or I’ve learnt how to cope with it. To be quite honest with you, I’m 99% sure it’s much improved, rather than learning to cope with it.

Today, brain fog, and I could argue that this is because I’ve not been out running for a few weeks now, since I damaged knee ligaments. Of course, there’s absolutely no proof of this at all, but I figure it’s a possible reason and if, psychologically, I believe that and it makes things better, then that’s good enough for me.

I’m half tempted to stop blogging altogether and remove this thing, but to be honest, I’m also sceptical that this will last forever and having a note of how things have gone over the months/years is probably going to be quite handy. So I’ll leave it as it is for the time being, and if I only post once every 6 months to say “yep, things are the same as before”, then I’ll be totally happy with that.

Cross those fingers for me, if you could.

I’m going to guess that it’s down to file locking, but I’ve filed the bug and will see what the EGit people come back with.

I’m still on target for the 10km in terms of distance, that isn’t looking like it will be a problem. Here’s the distances I’ve run so far:

I need to try to increase my speed though, and apparently the best way to do that is with interval training. This sounds like some serious punishment, but in fairness, there’s a brilliant straight road near where I live where I can do this quite easily, using lamp-posts to measure out distances. It’s about a mile long and quite flat, so it’s perfect.

Aside from that, I collected my new bike yesterday. Been wanting to get a new one pretty much ever since I got my last one, which was when I was ill back in 2005. Psychologically, it’s always going to be connected with that time in my life, and I’d rather forget about that time, so a new bike was needed. Also, I don’t like mountain bikes, and I’ve gone back to a road bike. Decided to get a Specialized Secteur Triple, and it’s awesome. So light, and with flappy paddle gear shifters, which might take some getting used to. And the fact that the brakes are in a different place to the last road bike I had many years ago, that’ll also take some getting used to. Took it out for 2 minutes last night to make sure I could change gears, and this thing is fast. Going to head in to the bike shop tomorrow to pick up lights, and will ride in. Should be interesting to see what speeds I can get to on it.

The really useful thing about this is that it seems to have improved my balance somewhat. I didn’t think that running would be too much of a problem, because most of my balance related issues tend to be when I’m trying to change direction, or moving around without actually going anywhere, whereas when I attempt to go in a straight line, once I’m off it’s not a problem. Therefore, the running didn’t have me concerned. But the increase in my fitness and/or stamina really does seem to have improved things. I’m even wondering whether there’s a vague possibility that I might be able to play football again. I figure that I could have that as an aim and if I don’t manage to do it, I’ve not lost anything since I’ve not played for about 5 years. But if I could manage it…

On other news, I’m now 5 years without any alcohol and in April will be 10 years without any cigarettes. Man alive, that’s too much clean living. I shall have to find a vice.

After much deliberation, I decided to buy a Netgear WNDR3300, which is capable of 802.11n. Not only that, but it also dual band, which seemed cool, although ultimately wasn’t really going to bring me anything extra. What it did do, though, was make it clear to me which of my devices (PC, Xbox etc) was capable of the ‘n’ band, as it basically runs as two separate wireless routers with different names, so when I connected a device to the wireless router, older devices could only connect to the ‘g’ band while the newer ones preferred the ‘n’ band. So this was useful just so that I could see which devices supported ‘n’.

What a bad decision that was.

The problems were made very obvious by the fact that it was dual band – the faster band, the ‘n’ one, worked perfectly. I only have about 2 devices capable of connecting to the ‘n’ band, one being my main desktop, and they all connected no problem to it, and stayed connected to it.

However, the devices which couldn’t connect to the ‘n’ band, which accounted for almost everything else, had the problems. They could all connect to the ‘g’ band fine, but they then disconnected from it within a few minutes, and although they reconnected themselves again within a couple of minutes, then disconnected again. And so on. I know the problem was with the wireless router because I had six separate devices all having the same problem, and it was a wide range of devices, too (multiple PCs, Xbox, PS3, Nokia N97).

So back to the shop it went, and PC World were good enough to just believe me that it needed returned, they didn’t even ask what was wrong with it. Maybe they had seen many coming back before.

Another couple of days research then made me consider a different device. While the Netgear one had been £110, I discovered one by a company called Edimax, model BR-6574n, which was only £50 but supported ‘n’ band. It doesn’t have two bands, but as I say, that wasn’t really bringing me anything; we don’t run video feeds over our connection much, if ever.

So I got this Edimax device and all I can say is that it is one of the best IT purchases ever. It was fairly simple to set up, the instructions did not quite match the questions that the installer ultimately asked, but I guessed at what to do and it was a breeze from then on. It’s been running for many weeks and I’ve only had to restart it once, and even then I’m not sure that it was at fault, because I reckon it might have been the cable modem behind it. It even allows me to set static DHCP leases based on MAC addresses, which is something that no other wireless router has allowed me to do before. I find this handy for reasons that I’ll not bore you with; 99.9% of you won’t need this feature so don’t worry about it.

The bottom line therefore is that if you’re looking for a new wireless router for a broadband connection, then I thoroughly recommend the Edimax BR-6574n.

I say this only as advice if anyone is considering getting a Mac and has been a Windows user up to now. Expect a learning curve. Basic things that you’re probably used to won’t work. Like copy and paste. Or your keyboard having such things as a delete key. Or your mouse having a right mouse button that reliably works.

To that end, I am planning on getting a bigger keyboard for the Mac, still a Mac keyboard since they come with that other key (hold on… aye, the cmd key) but one with a delete key, and maybe a page up and page down key would be nice. And I’ll switch to a normal mouse, because I’ve had it already with this Mac mouse and it’s tiny scroll wheel that makes my finger feel like the skin is being dragged under the plastic. It’s awful. But the Mac experience in general is going well to the point that I now sit at my Windows machine and wonder why I can no longer copy and paste and discover it’s because I’m using the Mac keyboard shortcuts.

I fully admit to being a keyboard shortcut junky, and I also know I’ve learnt about 0.3% of the keyboard shortcuts for the Mac, whereas I probably know about 70% of all the Windows ones (feels like I know 100%, but there are bound to be plenty I don’t know). Once I get a handle on them, I’ll be a lot more comfortable with it. That said, I’m actually quite comfortable with the Mac already and I’ve only had it for, erm, a week? I honestly can’t recall when I got it, last week was weird and I never knew what day it was. It would have been either Tuesday or Wednesday. Wednesday, that was it, I think. Anyway, less than a week, and I’m getting there.

Trying to get my external audio equipment to work reliably with it has been a struggle though. On Sunday, it just wasn’t working at all and a reboot solved the problems, so I don’t know what was going on there but it is in some way reassuring to know that rebooting does fix things sometimes on a Mac. The audio setup includes an Alesis io|2, a Boss DR-880, a Pod X3 Live, a Fender strat, a Yamaha bass (man I need to replace it), an Ovation, a Yamaha Clavinova and a Shure SM58. I have managed to get it all working together, with relatively little pain, aside from MIDI. That took some effort. But I did get there, I can now get Logic to play the piano. It even creates sheet music as I play something, it’s totally awesome.

So all in all, it’s been some week and I’ve learnt a lot. Still a long way to go, but I’m definitely getting somewhere.