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Salvaging Videos from Disappearing Online Courses using Windows Based PCs

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There are lots of details here, but it’s easy once you go through it once or twice, because all it comes down to are the steps below, which you can just try for short video samples without reading the rest of the post, and see if you feel like you need to read the rest of it:

  • Go to the online course as if you were going to view it
  • Hold the Windows key while pressing g to get the recording interface
  • Do a few setups (or not, but if so, you’ll be familiar with after first try)
  • Start recording on the recording interface, press Play on the video
  • Stop when done recording or when episode ends and URL changes to next episode. The site keeps on playing, but your video recording will not switch, it seems. You have to leave the video to play to record, unfortunately, not like file downloads, but you can keep it on mute.

Do a few demos first for a few minutes each to get things right. Then go at it for real. Good luck!

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One Bad Clown Beating Should Stop All This Clowning Around

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Clowns have been at it again recently, making random appearances and freaking out people.

Hey, that’s fun! Who wouldn’t want to scare people like that?

Well, lots don’t but lots still would, kind of like practical jokes and Hallowe’en jokes, except on a more adult level with a little more creep. And as long as there’s no cost or consequences, what’s to stop someone from doing so?

Ah, but that’s the magic phrase!

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My First Ao Dai

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Recently, I submitted an entry into a sewing contest. For it, I motivated myself to finally learn how to make an ao dai (ow-yai, meaning long garment), the national garment of Viet Nam, my country of origin. I used a pattern for a base, Folkwear 139. However, I customized it to fit a 5’10” friend who was my sewing model. I also fixed how the shoulders were done because sewing it as instructed left a very jagged shoulder “dart”, which was essentially what I was doing more than sewing it together as a seam. Then I extended the neck line from the body up so it didn’t leave such a big collar. Finally, on my real garment, I redrafted the front and back pieces to remove the vertical darts so as not to disturb the beautiful big print, and took out a dart on the sleeve.

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Stem Soup and Recipe-ish

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Recently, I ended up with a lot of full leaf spinach (the way they’re harvested), green onions and cilantro from a grocery trip. It was my first time getting such spinach for myself, usually getting them in pre-packaged bags without long stems. Summer abundance meant the bundles I bought, along with the green onions and cilantro, were also excessive, so I had a lot of vegetable stems on my hands all of a sudden. Not being one to waste food, I thought about what I could do with all these stems, since they weren’t generally appealing to me if they would have been used like the rest of the stock. I didn’t like the crunchy nature of the stems, and the green onion stems were just a bit odd in flavour for my liking. I usually eat the green onion stalks a bit into the white where it starts to bulge into the bulbs, but this batch had a lot of white before it bulged and I was going to challenge myself to eat a good portion of it rather than waste it.

After some thinking, stem soup was what I came up with.

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San Clemente’s Not the Same, Mr Nixon You’re to Blame!

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Just watched Our Nixon on CNN, and my favourite part was this little rag at the end! A cute little ditty by sung by Barbara Foster and written by Myron Ace, its theme denounces the Washington/political tourist crowd that bombarded San Clemente after Richard Nixon moved to San Clemente’s coastal hamlet and bought the Cotton’s estate. To this day the home is still known as the Western White House.

I don’t think this song has ever gotten the attention it just got now on CNN! I get the feeling it’s gonna be sung a lot more often now with its catchy chorus of “Mr Nixon, you’re to blame” and Nixon’s image associated with the Watergate Scandal that seemed like everybody around Nixon went to jail for except Nixon.

Mr Nixon, you’re to blame… Mr Nixon you’re to blame…