www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts -- check it out.

And there you have it.

A client of ours, Marina Protection Systems, is going to be at a boat show in the coming week. They have a Flash animation on their website that they'd like to have displaying in a continuous loop on a TV screen in their booth at the show.

I set about decoding the SWF file and in the end managed to convince Quicktime Pro to handle it for me. The trick was allowing Flash components to always be accessed via Quicktime. I was experiencing a black image when I attempted to export from SWF and figured out that I had to allow Flash access all the time from within Quicktime.

I tried a bunch of online conversion sites and trawled heaps of forums looking for SWF convertors but the best I could find would only take FLV (Flash Video) and not SWF. ffmpeg (and it's Mac OSX cousin ffmpegX), which normally chews this kind of thing up for breakfast, wouldn't touch it either - apparently it'll handle the audio stream only, which is no use when I only care about the video.

I exported it as a high-quality DivX file and then using Visual Hub converted the DivX directly into a DVD ISO. I then used Disco to burn the ISO file and I tested it in my Panasonic DVD player. It worked a treat and the resolution was quite high, considering the source was a web animation.

Those of you that follow closely will be aware that I'm in the process of ditching the Commonwealth Bank of Australia as my primary banking institute in favour of the ANZ. As part of that process I'm ditching my CBA Mastercard (and it's eighteen percent interest rate). Before I chop the plastic I wanted to spend the award points that I've accrued over the last few months.

In the past I've traded the awards for useless crap like a beach volleyball set and a mechanical tape measure. Man that was stupid. I also used the award points to get our espresso machine 18 months ago so they're not entirely useless.

I checked through the current catalogue and didn't want to waste the points, either on something stupid or by not cashing in on them at all. In the end I used the points to knock a hundred bucks off a silver 4GB iPod Nano.

Maggie's been using my iPod Shuffle for the past few weeks so it was a good excuse to buy myself a new one. I also want to use it in the car, though all the FM transmitters are useless. Adam bought a tape adapter which he claims is ace. For 4 bucks I'll give that a go.

My relationship with the Nano got off on the wrong foot - at first it wouldn't let me eject it and complained that it was in use. I ignored that warning a few times and I was rewarded with a corrupt memory. Thankfully all it took was one click on "Restore" from within iTunes and things were A-OK. I suspect it was Quicksilver or Spotlight trying to index the filesystem, but whatever it was, it's not doing it anymore and I'm enjoying Jody as I strut down the street.

No matter how much I dislike Microsoft's operating systems, software and next-generation game consoles (well I love my Xbox 360, it just doesn't love me back) my skin crawls when I see people write "M$" instead of "MS".

The first (of hopefully many) challenges has been completed. Last night I beat Shane.

I took top-control and found myself in his half-guard. I passed through to side control and quickly claimed mount. I was thinking "don't screw this up" as I climbed up into a high mount. I repositioned Shane so that I could see Adam and he was giving me the thumbs-up. I started sneaking my arm around his head and when he tried to get me off mount I locked in an Ezekiel choke. I was prepared for a tough ride - last time I did this move on him I nearly ripped my fingers out of their sockets - but this time he tapped after a few seconds.

I've made a slow start to the list but my intention is still to complete them all by the end of the year.