raloria

My mom & I are currently (since New Year's Eve 2020) been on a project of watching our entire collection of movies on DVD: from A-Z (by title). We're currently in the B's.

However, we've already run into playback issues and after the one tonight, I realized they were all Warner Brothers DVDs. A quick Google search, and sure enough, this is a well-known problem. Apparently, WB used to press their discs at a plant in PA, but since 2010 moved their disc-manufacturing to Mexico. It's all those PA discs that are causing problems. The years of manufacturing seem to be from 2006-2009.

Our issues so far:

The Matrix: This was our 1st issue, before we even decided to watch our whole collection. I can't even get the Menu screen to load.
Annie Get Your Gun: Froze during the layer change. Could almost get it to play past the problem chapter, but it got too aggravating.
Royal Wedding: Froze during the layer change. I tried to move past the problem chapter (18) but it kept freezing on the Scene Selection page and then playing one of the extras.

There's a great (and long!) thread of people reporting issues with their own WB DVDs over at Home Theater Forum. It is very informative about the problems people have had and a solution: WB will try to replace your defective DVDs (for free!). As long as they're still making DVDs (or Blu-Rays) of the movie, they'll mail you a new disc.

Something else that people have noticed: just because your DVD plays well today, doesn't mean that it will tomorrow, or months from now. And in DVD sets, some discs will be fine and others will not. Seems like these PA factory pressed DVDs are ticking time bombs. You never know when they'll fail. *sigh*

Thankfully, it looks like the Made On Demand (MOD) DVDs from the Warner Archive site are all doing just fine.

So this is pretty disappointing! Here we thought back in the day when DVDs first came out that they were going to be THE final way to archive movies. DVDs were supposed to last forever, right? Not so much.

Anyway, I thought I'd post this as a heads-up for anyone else (like us) who still have DVDs in their possession.

Happened to discover a weird LJ Layout issue tonight.
Thankfully, it's only showing up on the Chrome & Opera Beta browsers (at least for me).
I checked it out in Safari, Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi, & Yandex browsers and everything looks fine on them.

The issue is having thumbnail images in an LJ post that are no longer nice and neat within the confines of the layout, but spill over in a horizontal line to the right, causing a scroll bar to appear at the bottom of the page.

Like this...Ugh!



So I apologize to anyone looking at my big image posts on my LJ or hurtwinchesters or spn_locations on the Chrome or Opera Beta browsers. Hopefully, they will update their code or whatever & those thumbnails will get back in line!

Until then, I hope you use other browsers to view LJ that don't have this issue! :)

I just made this animated gif because I need it in my life. ;)



I'll be making a formal posting of this gif (and in other sizes) next week. Stay tuned!

♦ Who knew you couldn't use Spotify in the Safari web browser??? WTH??? *fumes* I looked into why, but then my eyes glazed over because apparently there isn't any solution. Grrr! Well, that's annoying! Especially since I'm trying to use my Safari browser more now, because for some reason when I watch online videos too long in any other browser, my CPU heats up. WTH is with that??? *sigh*

♦ I uploaded the above animation to one of my old Photobucket accounts. Yes, still trying to decide what to do about them - which account to sign up for with payments again, now that they've got more reasonable plans. I wouldn't have even uploaded it to PB, but I can't get into my account at PhotoLand.io!!!! That's where I've been uploading and posting my gifs from. All of a sudden there's no way to sign in with Twitter, which is what I used. Gah!!!! I've contacted them about it, but who knows if I'll ever get a response. Well, speak of the devil....just got this email from them:

Hello,

We are having issues with the twitter API and are working on fixing it. Will update you once it's working again.

Thank you
Photoland Team

Well, I'll give them points for getting back to me so quickly. Sad that I can't get into my account there though. Serves me right for going the shortcut way into signing into a site. *sigh* So I guess I'll be using my PB accounts again for now...

Ok. Wow! The PhotoLand Support Team literally just got back to me, saying the problem is fixed. Sure enough, I was able to log in w/Twitter and upload the gifs. Yay! Very impressive support at PhotoLand!

♦ For my artsy & craftsy friends, I got quite the deal this past week at Hobby Lobby. A Marvy waterbrush marked down to $1.24, a set of Faber Castell 24 Watercolor Pencils marked down to $3.74 (from $14.99), and a set of 25 Stabilo colored pens marked down to $7.49 (from $29.99!). I've always been curious about the Stabilo pens because I've heard such good things about them (they are good!) but the price always turned me off. No more! These aren't the first great deals I've found at HL. A month or so ago I finally got a Gouache set of paints that was marked way down. I do love saving money on supplies!

♦ I found a great site for free book PDFs! Check out Ocean Of PDF! I've already got a few of them loaded on my phone for reading there. Such a great selection.

♦ Since SPN is finished for the summer, it's time to start in on updating the Locations List (LL) with Season 13 for spn_locations. Problem is...looking up addresses on Google Maps really eats up my internet data. *heavy sigh* I could really use some help from volunteers, but I've failed to use people in the past so I'm pretty sure it's a waste of time. People don't want to risk it. Of course, this time I KNOW what I would have volunteers help me with! :(

♦ Late add-in Edit!!!! OMG Does anyone else play Candy Crush on their phone??? I've been stuck on a level before, but nothing like with Level 149! OMG!!!! I CANNOT GET THROUGH IT!!!!! I've lost track of how many times I've played that level. And I've had tons of help from the game, but alas....still stuck. Gah!

My internet data is almost all used up, so posting to LJ for the next 11 days is going to be questionable as my connection speed will be dropped down to 2G. At that speed it takes web pages forever to load and uploading/downloading is impossible. I'll be able to upload individual caps, but that's about it. *sigh*

I am trying to find another solution, but it's complicated with my situation. But I am definitely a heavy internet user and simply do not fit the norm. These 22GB through T-Mobile simply aren't cutting it. I so miss my Clear Internet!!!! It was slow, but unlimited and I could do anything. Ah, the good old days!

So it'll be a long 10 days until June 11th when my data plan renews and things get back to normal posting-wise.

Okay, I've gotten several requests to re-upload zipped folders of my SPN Gag Reel caps, especially for Season 5 for some reason. I appreciate the renewed interest in old caps, but sadly at the moment my internet is nearly dial-up slow. This means that uploading any major files is pretty much impossible.

However, I'll be back up to full, fast speed internet on the 11th.
So if you all will be just a little patient with me, I'll (hopefully) be able to provide the requested caps.

I say hopefully because I have to find the Gag Reel caps on an external hard drive. I probably have them...can't imagine that I wouldn't but I've been known to lose files. Keep your fingers crossed.

Of course, I'm also thinking I could probably make better caps now from a youtube video of the gag reels?
I'll have to do some searching and see if anyone's got them uploaded at a high resolution. That might be another option.

Anyway, I thank you for the requests, but ask for your patience over the next several days. :)

Has anyone been having problems viewing the caps, images, etc. on my LJ?
Namely for the Beginnings & Endings, SPN Name That Cap Challenge 5, Random Fanart, and the various "goodies" posts (like the Video & Caps posts I've been doing lately).

This was initially brought to my attention by sandy79 a few days ago on my Happy SPN Day post.

I checked things out and discovered that I could see all the images on my posts in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers. However, they were missing when using Opera and Vivaldi.

Now I've had this issue in the past and usually it eventually corrects itself, but tonight I got to checking into it more (because I was using the Opera browser) and found out why the images aren't showing up.

The links were different in SlickPic. Like the coding had mysteriously been changed since I made the posts!
What. The. Hell???

I looked back and it all began after November 1st! Before that date everything's fine.

Now I've gone and edited some of the posts and fixed the problem, but it's a lot of posts to take care of so I thought I'd ask if anyone else is having this problem. If not, well maybe I won't go back and re-edit them all...maybe. *sigh*

So has anyone else been having problems viewing the caps/images on my Livejournal?

Please let me know. I always appreciate when people notify me of a problem because I want to fix it for you all.

Somehow in the process of having an external hard drive hooked up to my laptop, a whole folder of photos & videos from VanCon 2016 just disappeared! It went from being a folder of several GB to a file of 1KB.

Gaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!

Thankfully, the original photos & videos are still on my camera and I can back them up again.
So frustrating though!

My laptop is running out of room and memory, so I've been trying to back-up files on external hard drives and even online, but in trying to back-up the files I keep running into issues (like programs or the entire laptop freezing up) because of the lack of room and memory. It's quite the conundrum.

I realized there was 12GB of photos & videos in my iPhoto Library, so I was backing those onto the external hard drive in order to delete them off the system. But it's also giving me problems. *sigh* I'm like, "Just let me back up these files all nicely and you'll HAVE more room, laptop!!!!!" I know the laptop's old, but I do not need these temper tantrums! Grrrrr!

The posts I just put up for today might be it until Monday.
I'm just about out of internet data and my new plan doesn't kick in until the 11th. *sigh*

I've been extra careful and tried to stretch out my last 2 gigs as much as I could, but T-Mobile has slowed my bitrate way down (they don't just cut you off when you run out, which is good, I guess). Honestly, I'm surprised it's kept me going this long. I'll keep posting over the weekend if I still can, but I thought a little heads-up would be helpful.

I put the PhotoBucket app back on my phone...just in case. ;)
And sorry about not replying back to your comments over the past couple of days, but I'll get to them on Monday.

Ok, it's not like I ever really left considering I kept posting from my phone but....I HAZ INTERNET AGAIN!!!!

Wheee!!! Got a 4G mobile hotspot from T-Mobile and already I'm noticing a big increase in speed (Clear's internet was slow, but you got unlimited data...those days are over). There will be a bit of a learning curve as I test how much data I can use, but I've got a fair number of GB to start with and whatever I don't use carries over into the next month, so that's helpful.

Hells bells, I'm just happy I don't have to post to LJ from my phone anymore. That was the pits! :P
And now I can finally catch up on my Friends list and hopefully get back to replying to comments.

However, this will probably put a big crimp on my watching of youtube videos...boo. But we'll see.
As far as uploading caps/photos, and getting SPN episodes...again, part of the learning curve.

Aaaahhhh! So good to be back. :D

I double checked the info. about when my internet was going to shut down and it said 12:01 am my time on the 6th. So I made those last 2 posts just before midnight - just in case.

Well, midnight came and went and I was still online! Everything was working until a little after 3 am. Then I couldn't get anymore sites to load. Looks like my online fun with the laptop is truly over...for now.

Edit: Nevermind! I've still got internet on my laptop! What????
I think someone at Sprint fell asleep at the switch because no way should I be online right now. This is crazy!