2013 January 27 archive at Robert Pogson

Archive for January 27th, 2013

Finally A Decent Easy To Use Video Editor For GNU/Linux

Published by Robert Pogson January 27th, 2013 in technology. 10 Comments

There are a bunch of video editors for GNU/Linux but most of them are difficult to use or fragile. Here is one that is both easy and robust while being moderately powerful. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Cinellera or LightWorks but if you’re just producing a short video for YouTube, who cares?

Check out OpenShot. It’s in the Debian repositories. Do try the latest package in “unstable”. It is an improvement over the current package in “testing” and far ahead of the version in the current release, Squeeze. There is a missing dependency. You need to manually install yelp if it is not already installed to get Help to work. So far OpenShot has worked flawlessly for me and the GUI has been all I needed to get started. One of the most beautiful features is that it is “web-aware” in that it knows the setting needed for videos to upload to YouTube and other sites so you don’t have to tweak arcane settings, just a main topic. I like that. It eliminates a lot of trial and error. Even I can do titles, fades and transitions with no help at all. Copy-and-paste works well. This is another great addition to Debian GNU/Linux.

Despite being used by hundreds of thousands, donations are lagging for such a great project. Try it and donate what you can to contribute.

- Robert Pogson

Telling It Like It Is On “Gun-Control”

Published by Robert Pogson January 27th, 2013 in firearms. 10 Comments

The riotous “debate” on gun-control in USA is actually about “people-control”, not saving children. One editor gets it.
“Protected by a hundred supersonic fighter jets, ten thousand armored vehicles with machine-gun turrets, and twenty million fully functional military tanks (many of them equipped with really cool-looking flamethrowers and some awesome newfangled sonic crowd-control technology), Senator Dianne Feinstein boldly rode her bulletproof limo into Washington DC yesterday and called for a new ban on so-called “assault weapons.””

see Uncle Sam, Give Us Your Guns – Taki's Magazine.

The bottom line? The editor writes it might be reasonable to expect citizens to give up their firearms when the government does… As if that will ever happen. This is above and beyond other uses of firearms like hunting, collecting and target-shooting where firearms of many kinds make sense one way or another. Most of the debates engaged by the politicians don’t seem to make sense. The politicians seem to love to ignore other arguments, beg the question or make unreasonable leaps of logic.

On a related note, see “Disarming the Slaves” on the same site. Refreshing.

- Robert Pogson

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.