Down for everyone or just me?

Here's a good website to know: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

It checks to see if a website is up and running.

Have you ever tried to go to a website .. and your browser times out? And then you wonder if you're having internet/browser issues, because the website must be working.

Well, go to http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com and put the website URL in. This webpage will check on its own to see if website is up and running. It's just another unique site to know about. I'm sure you'll use it every so often!

Making an animated gif from a movie clip

Using open-source software, I was able to take a clip from a movie file and turn it into an Animate GIF file.

Software: VLC and ImageMagick
Operating System: Windows 7 64bit (XP will work too)
Movie filename: "Epv peeps rev1.mov"

Command line for VLC: "C:\Program Files\VLC\vlc.exe" --video-filter scene -V dummy --scene-format=png --scene-ratio=3 --scene-width=300 --start-time=1 --stop-time=21 --scene-path=c:\temp\fw --scene-prefix=fw "c:\temp\Epv peeps rev1.mov" vlc://quit

This will create subdirectory c:\temp\fw and place files with the name "fw00001.png" and add multiple files with numerically incremented filenames.

Now to convert to an Animated GIF:
"c:\Program Files (x86)\ImageMagick\convert.exe" c:\temp\fw\*.png c:\temp\fw\John.GIF

This will create "John.GIF" comprised of all the png files created from the video file. Finding the correct parameters for VLC was difficult because they made minor changes with each newer version.