kbf_private_joker

Hi-def picture and sound takes up a ton of space. They also usually have DTS, Dolby, and many other high quality formats so most people can benefit I used to think the same thing. However, I've seen movies from the 60s and 70s on hi-def and they look fantastic. When they created the VHS and DVDs, there is a ton of detail that is lost because those formats had a relatively low resolution. Give it time and BluRay will become affordable. Most people still don't have HD TVs but once those are reasonably affordable ($300-500 range), everyone will want to benefit from the new format. Trust me once you see a few in HD, you don't want to go back.

I have a dedicated bittorrent server, so ratios for me aren't a problem anymore. It saves me a ton of time and I can add torrents anywhere using a web interface.

Having the crop area already set up for you will save a ton of time. Manually cropping will also make the pages uneven in that when you resize to 1440, the heights will be different. Then when you open them in a reader, you get different zoom sizes.

I always thought Goro was a much better villain than Shang Tsung.

Ah, 2 years ago. This is probably before they started uploading all their episodes to Hulu.com. They realized they can't stop piracy so next best thing is to compete with it. I like Hulu.com, but it it only has a few past episodes and sometimes I want to collect an entire season for future viewing.

Where did you download it from? What is your ISP? Where you using Bittorrent or P2p, like Kazaa or Limewire? What did the letter say? (I'm curious ) I've been downloading shows for about 5 years and never a problem.

Here's my workflow 1. Scan however pages I think I can accomplish in a reasonable amount of time (usually batches of 50 to keep the whole process under 1 hour) 2. Use the horizontal selection as a gauge to check how straight a random line on the page is (I was mistaken when I said cropping section. The horizontal one should be either 2nd or 3rd choice in the selection box. I'm not at home or else I'd include a screenshot) 3. If not straight, I use F3 or F4 (set up macros for 0.25 CW or CCW) 4. Now that everything is straight, I just need to crop. I set up a crop box that will allow me to crop every page without having the scanner glass showing (use regular selection tool and make sure it is set to fixed crop, not 4x5, 3x5, etc.) - There will be some pages that crop more than others. That is ok. It is more important to not show the scanner glass. 5. Go through each page and crop. After setting down the crop selection box, I press F4 (macro to crop) - On 2 page spreads, I set the pages side by side and verify that the crops will match in the middle. For all others, I just make sure I have the crop centered on the page. 6. Once everything is cropped, I do a batch job that resizes to 1200 or 1440 for the width and will resize the height. The batch job also saves the JPG at level 9 to disk. Level 10 is overkill in my opinion. 2x-3x the size on disk and no noticeable difference when looked at on a 24 inch LCD monitor. - Since all pages have the same resolution, they should all be the same size in the end. 7. Then I bulk rename using Bulk Rename Tool (Google for the free app - it's wonderful for lots of activities other than this too) 8. RAR all the files, including the Retromags page at the end 9. Rename to .CBR or .CBZ (I do .CBR out of habit and no other reason) 10. Upload (when upload is about 2 min from completion, I create a 90-100KB thumbnail for the site) Done!

100% agree. SNES > everything else

The one thing I hate about CA is we don't get decent thunderstorms :(

What about Bittorrent? I haven't turned on our regular TV in years. There are also ways of watching live tv through webpages for extreme cases (like NBA playoffs). Everything else comes down through Bittorrent. Why pay for cable when you can get everything for free, without commercials, in 720p. There is also Hulu.com

What he said ^^^. 720p MKV is my choice. 1080p doesn't seem to produce a noticeable difference to warrant 2x the size on my hard drive.

I actually used to do that, but I found it is actually easier to use F3 and F4 to rotate by 0.25% clockwise/counterclockwise. For some reason, drawing the line seemed to be more of a hassle and didn't always produce straight results. Also, instead of using the crop selector, I use the horizontal line. To access it, hold the crop selector box and it should be one of the options. Then find a straight line on the page and compare. For some reason this works better for me than the auto-rotate. Another tip is to use a consistent size cropping box instead of re-drawing it every time. You'll lose some of the outer-most parts, but it is so much faster than re-drawing the box every page.

Are you seriously trying to argue that VHS > DVD? And how come you didn't include Blu-Ray in the poll? In all seriousness, the ultimate format is MKV or AVI. Watching movies on the computer is my choice. 0 ads. 0 PSAs. No cases cluttering up the house.

I used to keep all my old Newsweek magazines (1999-today) in hopes that I'd eventually scan them. However, with almost every article ever created in a digital format somewhere on the internet, it makes no sense at all. Plus, it was just taking up space. I also contemplated selling them on Ebay or Craigslist, but it really doesn't seem worth the hassle. The fortunate (or unfortunate) thing about the internet is that keeping information in a physical format will probably be more and more rare. I know most newspapers will be gone in 5 years. I also don't see this as a bad thing. Getting information digitally is so much more convenient. The truth is that keeping magazines in a physical format is only for collectors. Our kids won't find any use in reading things in a hard copy. Most of my information either comes from my Ipod touch (great device!) or an LCD monitor.

I 100% agree with this. Games like Super Mario Bros 3 are great because it didn't have to have 3d graphics or awesome sound to be fun to play. To me, fun is the most important aspect of any game. This is why games like SMB3 will be great forever.

If only I had a USB joystick setup. However, it was still fun to play on the keyboard.

I would verify a few things before blindly taking it crops as golden. 1. Is the document straight? I get about 10% of my document straight enough on the first try. Everything else gets about .2-.3% turn to get it straight. 2. Can you specify a size for the crop? If not, it'll look weird because some pages are larger than others. I did this on my first scan here and was a bit bummed at how crappy that looks. Other than that, happy scanning. With this new scanner, can we expect 2 magazines per month now?

Peggle is one of the most addictive games on the Iphone. However, I am not sure I would want to play it on the pc.

I agree. I say go for it. I'm sure we can have someone create a graphic to promote the site.

^^^ Everything he said is spot on. Eating 6 meals of 300-500 calories keeps the metabolism running full speed all day. I also recommend getting a hobby that includes burning calories. I recently got back into BMX and it's not only a ton of fun, but burns calories like crazy. Exercising is also a hunger suppressant so when you are done, you don't feel like you need a 800 calorie burger to make up for the calories that were just burned.

There are 2 reasons I hardly get excited about current video game magazines: 1. When the information arrives at your door, it is about 1 month old. All current gaming news and reviews can be found online. When I was 12, there was no internet so any information that was packed into the magazine was all I could get. Now that the information is everywhere, there is almost no reason to even bother subscribing. Plus, most of the magazines (those still around anyways) have websites that list all the reviews anyways. 2. Tastes and hobbies change as you age. When I was 12, I had nothing but time to burn all summer and even during the year. Now that I am 28 and have a job, the free time I do get is spent on other stuff. The truth is that sitting down and spending 40 hours beating a game isn't something I am interested in doing anymore. I have a tendency to install games and spend 2 hours, then get bored and rarely return to finish them. This is part of the reason I like games on the Iphone. They are instant gratification without the time commitment.

Thanks for sharing!

Sounds good. As long as we drill it in people's heads that they need to keep it updated, it will work great. It's like everything else, as long as you use it, it works perfectly

I'm glad you mentioned Burger King. There is a guy at my work who eats Burger King almost every day. He, however, is probably only about 190 (5'11 or so). He claims to only do about 1.5 hours of cardio a week, so maybe he just has a gifted metabolism. One thing that I noticed that if you eat at home, it is much easier to eat whatever you want and not pack on the pounds. It's when you eat out that it kills you. I could easily eat 1200 calories a meal if I at out for every meal.

How tall and how much do you weigh? If I ate whatever I wanted, I'd put on 50 lbs in 6 months easy.