Moo! The Musings of a Plaid Cow

подаръциикона за подаръкAll of the episodes (starting with Season 31) are available to watch on the This Old House website. Unfortunately, I would much rather be able to watch them on my television. The following steps show how to download them from the website for playback anywhere.

Note: I consider this fair use of the videos and, as described in the outdated original source I used, this technique should not be used to steal content.

These instructions are based on using Safari in Max OSX. They may be adaptable for other browsers or operating systems, but that is outside of my interest.

1. Remove the Flash Video Player from Safari (if it is installed). Make a backup (for re-installation), then delete these files using the Finder:

   • /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player.plugin
   • /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/flashplayer.xpt

2. Ensure the Develop menu is available in Safari. Enable it on the Advanced pane in Safari Preferences.

3. Go to the the page of the This Old House video that you want to download. You should get an error that Flash needs to be updated.

4. Change the User Agent to one for Safari iOS. Select Safari iOS from ‘Develop > User Agent’ in the menubar. (The iPad version seems to work more successfully than the one for iPhone.)

5. If a preview of picture of the video loads:

   1. Right click the video and choose “View Frame Source”.
   2. Use ‘Edit > Find > Find…’ to search for “mp4″. Find the second occurrence.
   3. You are now looking at a list of videos, each with a different encoding rate and frame size. (The size of the smallest video will be about 30 MB, the largest 300MB.) Pick the video file that you want to download and copy what looks approximately like a URL from the line, starting with ‘http’ and ending with ‘mp4′. If in doubt of which one to pick, use the one with the largest encoding number and largest frame size.
   4. Close the Source window.
   5. Paste the text into the address bar in Safari.
   6. Edit the text in the address bar to remove all backslash characters (backslashes travel from upper left to lower right). (This replaces each ‘\/’ with a single ‘/’.)

6. If a preview picture of the video does NOT load:

   1. Right click in the black box and choose “View Frame Source”
   2. Use ‘Edit > Find > Find…’ to search for “video.pbs”.
   3. Copy the URL, stopping before the question mark.
   4. Paste the URL into the address bar in Safari and press “Return”.
   5. Use ‘Edit > Find > Find…’ to search for “mp4″
   6. Copy this URL and paste it into the address bar in Safari.

7. Hold “Option” and press “Return” to initiate the download.

8. Wait for the download to finish.

A toast to fatherhood and the crap people will convince you to buy
Fancy clothes instead of just a one piece sleeper
Newborn clothes which be worn once before being outgrown
Pee-Pee Teepee which will fall off as your kid pees all over you
A baby wipe warmer which will never be in the location you need

A Toast to fatherhood, and the inane things you will find yourself saying:
Don’t put your butt on the patio door.
The Christmas Tree is not a potty!
Don’t mop the tree!
Stop mopping your sister’s head!
Don’t suck your toes until after your bath
Stop drinking the bathwater.
The refrigerator shelf is not a seat
The only person you can hit in the head with a hammer is yourself
Thank you for sharing, but puppies don’t eat with a spoon.

A toast to fatherhood and the indescribable feeling
of getting home at the end of a long day
and having a little one who thinks the world of you
scream out daddy
and come running.

To fatherhood.

I am still trying to figure out this recommendation from Amazon:

I have found a number of ways of how not to update an iPhone to iOS 5, yet I still haven’t figure out the proper way. I would like to update my wife’s iPhone, but i get this happy warning message:

And deleting everything off the iPhone (especially since it is not backed up) is NOT what I want to do. So maybe i should establish a syncing relationship with the computer.

Except that also wants to obliterate the iPhone. So how do I tell iTunes to sync itself to what is on the phone (without deleting anything)? I have no idea.

Vicki Poteet of VIP Real Estate is the best realtor in Indianapolis.

• Instead of putting an unwanted sign in our yard (we’re on a corner and many relators would like to use our yard), she took the time to ask if she could put it there. We always say yes–but most people don’t have the courtesy to ask, so the signs get ripped down.

• And, she came back after several weeks and took the sign down!

• And, she dropped off a business card, thanked us for letting her use our yard and left a $5 Starbucks gift card. (I don’t drink coffee, but that is not the point.)

Though all of this may seem obvious, and like common courtesy, in my view of the world, it was uncommon. And that is sad.

Dear Money Magazine,

Thank you for the kind renewal letter you sent in the mail (and the many that you have sent before it). Unfortunately, I must have received the wrong insert letter because the envelope claimed “Respond now for a great deal on your renewal” and the insert letter offered me a subscription at 8% off the cover price.

This “great deal” is 400% of the price I have renewed at before, so I don’t see myself taking advantage of this great deal. I suspect that I will receive the real great deal offer when you are trying to woo me back in 6 months or so. Please just send your best and final offer in the next mailing so that I can stop opening the renewal notices.

Sincerely,

Here’s a new method to get spam posted: post it as a compliment. Like this one:

Hey there would you mind stating which blog platform you’re using? I’m going to start my own blog in the near future but I’m having a tough time choosing between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal. The reason I ask is because your design seems different then most blogs and I’m looking for something unique. P.S Apologies for being off-topic but I had to ask!

Or this one

I really like your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you make this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you? Plz answer back as I’m looking to design my own blog and would like to find out where u got this from. thank you

If you really want to know, check the links at the bottom of the page.

If you’ve got a leaky faucet, that drip-drip-drip sound can drive you insane—especially at nighttime. Here’s an easy way to keep it quiet.

You mean, besides fixing it?

Response to the LifeHacker post on Quiet a Leaky Faucet with String.

According to Matt’s review, Axe Shock Shower Gel (Glacier Water + Deep Sea Mint + Menthol): This feels like putting icy hot on your balls.

Sounds like something I gotta try.

With all of the hubub about when life begins (at conception or birth), I was shocked to read the information supplied to me by MetLife about when life begins. (Regardless of what financial planners might say, I pay ~$16 per year for life insurance on my kids, in case something horrible happens. Trying to figure out how to pay for a funeral of any kind would be about the last thing on my mind.)

Anyway, according to MetLife, for insurance purposes, life begins at 14 days. If something happens any sooner than that, you probably weren’t that attached to them anyway.