I waited for Brian at the usual cafe, sipping my cappuccino slowly from its cup and re-reading David Eddings’ Belgariad series. I was down to Castle of Sorcery, nearly at the final book of the series, Enchanter’s Endgame. Despite some of its flaws, I still enjoyed Eddings’ books. Mostly because of the humor and the characters. It was always a good way to pass the time. Knowing Brian, being at least an hour late was par for the course for him.

Brian worked as an analyst at Betfair. My mother and father (who were close friends with his parents) had virtually adopted him after his parents disappeared, and we grew up together. Time and other assorted circumstances had separated us, however. But after my father died, we were finally got to meet each other again at his wake.

By then, Brian was working at Betfair, which was an online gambling site that also offered online casino and online lottery in the form of bingo, in addition to betting exchange in the form of sportsbooks. It was established around the year 2000, which makes it one of the oldest online gambling companies still in operation today.

Brian’s job at Betfair involved analyzing market trends regarding online casinos, online lotteries, and betting exchanges. He then drafts a report (which includes audience reactions and participation), and sends it over to his superior, who worked at one of the company’s headquarters in Dublin. His superior, in turn, reads the report and evaluates various data and considerations. In turn, the superior passes it to his superior. And so on, and so forth and, for all I know, ad infinitum.

Brian arrived about two hours later. By then, I had finished Eddings’ Castle of Wizardry and was beginning Enchanter’s Endgame. I was plodding through the annoying prologue regarding ‘Almighty Torak’ and finishing up my fourth cup of coffee when I heard the little bell at the cafe’s door tinkle, announcing Brian’s arrival.

Brian ordered a double shot espresso from the barista, and joined me at the table, sitting down in front of me. Some polite pleasantries were exchanged between the two of us.

I asked after his work at Betfair. He said everything was going fine. A little boring at times, though, according to him. Same with my work, I answered. I was currently contracted to a client at Upwork who asked me to spin articles found through Google searches, and transform them into unique articles for a how-to manual that targeted corporate audiences in Singapore. It was my first job as a freelancer at Upwork, one year after I created my account and left it alone without trying to look for work.

I went to the counter to order more coffee. I asked Brian if he wanted to eat anything, and it turned out we wanted the same thing: a full Irish breakfast.

I sat back at our table and continued my talk with Brian while waiting for our orders to arrive.

 

Video Encoding, Circa 2010s

Video encoding and re-encoding has come a long way since the first time I came across and experimented with it, which was around the mid-2000s. Back then, DivX was still quite the rage, and I was backing up my legally purchased VCD’s and DVD’s, converting from the original MPEG encoding into the DivX format. The results were quite satisfactory at the time, almost cutting the original file size in half. Back then, it was terribly important, as my dinosaur of a computer only had around 80 gigs of hard disk space, and I had a lot of media that I wanted to store and play directly on my desktop PC. I’ve never heard of external hard disks during that time, unfortunately.

Then came the Xvid format, which promised better quality than DivX in terms of video compression, which also meant better video quality. I found the Xvid format’s options much more flexible, and I quickly switched to that.

Back then, I used to programs to convert and edit files into the AVI container: VirtualDub, and Pegasys’ TmpegEnc, which had a 30-day trial period (if I remember correctly). VirtualDub, on the other hand, was freeware. Thankfully.

Then came different other video file containers in the form of OGM and MKV, and I switched to those containers, which made managing streams much more effective. As opposed to the AVI container, which could only include one video stream and one audio stream, the aforementioned containers allowed multiple streams of audio combined with one video stream—similar to how DVD’s operate. I found such features of those containers nifty, and switched to using a fork of VirtualDub, called VirtualDubMod, to handle conversion tasks.

Nowadays, things have become much better in terms of encoding. Since the 2010’s, I have come across various video encoded in the H264 (also known as x264) format using either the MKV container, or the MP4 container that soon replaced AVI. The H264 format offered even better compression than Xvid ever did. There were also more options of encoding programs out there. One of the most popular was Handbrake, a freeware program, unlike TmpegEnc.

I was a little too used to TmpegEnc by that time to make a switch to Handbrake, which was a little confusing to me at first. Eventually, as Handbrake got better and more user-friendly, I made the switch from the former program.

I had gotten used to encoding at H264 after a couple of years, when I heard about the x265 encoding. Like its predecessors, it was a step up in terms of technology, compressing video files at up to half the size of H264.

By then, our home got its first Smart TV, and upon learning that it could play x265 (and quite well, I might add), I was excited to learn how to convert videos into that format. Once I did, I began to re-encode various H264 encoded HD porn—cough—videos in order to save up on precious external storage space.

The results were astounding. Really. There’s no reason to keep using H264/x264 if your hardware can support x265.

I can’t wait to see what the future would bring to the realm of video encoding.

 

Ever since I got on with my current girlfriend, I have rarely had an occasion to listen to heavy metal that often. It was mainly because my girlfriend, who lived with me, went bonkers every time I played heavy metal at home. Back in the old days, I’d play metal all day. Sometimes I’d sing along. Other times, I’d connect my player to a loud sound system, tune it up to eleven, and bang my head to my favorite tunes.

I started listening to metal back in high school, when I came across an old song by Metallica (Enter Sandman, I think) playing over the MTV channel. Once I saved up enough money, I’d buy cassette tapes of their albums at my favorite record store. Their first official album, Kill ‘em All, had a raw edge to it that was very different to the song that MTV played. I was also an instant fan of bassist Cliff Burton, who would tragically die after their third album and be replaced by Jason Newsted.

Sometime after that, I discovered Megadeth. Their frontman, Dave Mustaine, used to be Metallica’s lead guitarist before being kicked off that band. Ostensibly, it was due to alcohol abuse. According to rumors and magazine interviews with James Hetfield (Metallica’s frontman), the problem they had with Mustaine was that whenever all the band members went out for drinks, Mustaine would be wild and angry and picking fights with anyone and everyone.

After Megadeth, I was introduced to a whole lot of other metal bands. I think it was around my fourth year in high school when I discovered European power metal after buying a cassette tape of Hammerfall’s Legacy of Kings. Since then, I’d listened almost exclusively to power metal all the way up to college and during my out of school years. Hammerfall, Helloween, Stratovarius, Metalium, Heavenly, Dark Moor, Edguy, Avantasia, Angra, Rhapsody—you name it, and I’ve probably listened to at least one of their albums. Their catchy, sing-along songs were infectious. And for a long time, I was a big fan of helium-high male vocals, going so far as to emulate them as I sang along.

I can’t still feel my almost-torn vocal chords whenever I went on a high octave without properly preparing for it. For weeks on end, I’d sing along my power metal albums for at least one hour. Sometimes, I’d sing along until I lost my voice.

After a while, I’d be able to comfortably sing at high octaves and emulate my favorite vocalists (except for Sebastian Bach of Skid Row, and Mark Boals). The only thing I couldn’t quite get were the growls of death metal vocalists on the rare occasions that I listened to it.

Of course, too much of a good thing can be detrimental to one’s enjoyment of something. In time, I developed ‘heavy metal’ fatigue. Curiously enough, I developed it about a year before I met my girlfriend.

Now I regained my interest in all things metal. The only regrettable thing, however, was that I could only listen to it through headphones, for fear of waking the ‘dragon’s wrath’.