Paint the Tiger, Carve the Swan

I’m trying to create reference movies (as Quicktime .MOV documents) for all of the movies on my Media server, and the most obvious method is to use AppleScript and Quicktime Player. Why am I doing this? Because iTunes requires Quicktime Movies, I’ve mainly got AVIs, and I don’t want to (a) convert all of them, and (b) have iTunes manage them. I’d rather have the files in the right spot, and allow iTunes to manage the reference movies.

Quicktime will often open files of varying types, even though iTunes will not. It’s then possible to save the file, and choose not to create a stand-alone movie. This will create a reference movie, which is much smaller than the original, but requires that the original remains in the same place in order to work.
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I like that iTunes displays half-star ratings, but I want my tracks rated 51-59 to display this way too. That doesn’t work, but if you use the following script, it will round the ratings of selected tracks to the nearest half-star:

tell application "iTunes"
	repeat with trk in selection
		set rating of trk to ((rating of trk) / 10 as integer) * 10
	end repeat
end tell

I hope Apple don’t include the functionality of odd-rated tracks to play different amounts, otherwise I’ll need to re-rate all of my music. Again.

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BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Monkey magic casts spell in Asia

Hot on the heels of the news of the Dark Crystal remake, comes this, an announcement that a Japanese company is redoing Monkey!, the tale of a priest and his companions, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy as they travel across China to India in search of the Buddha’s Scrolls.

It’s one of my all-time favourite shows (I now have the complete set, including the dozen or so that were never shown on Australian TV). I’ve read the original book, or rather a translation, written by Wu-chèn Eng, and can sagely say (that was supposed to be safely, but I like the typo) that the original TV series was true to the story.

I hope the new one is.

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