i admit it ...

defeat....

i'm giving up (for now) and i have to do something to mark the end of my effort (ergo, this post) or else my mind will linger and i won't let go of the obsession that has taken hold.

for the past half of this day i have been trying to get real alternative to play streaming Real media with my firefox browser but it still doesn't work and i can't be sure if the problem is fixable or if it is a result of an undiscovered technical bug in real alternative and/or firefox. google and i have been communicating with each other, exchanging everything we know on the topic at hand. google tells me that some Real streaming media cannot be played in firefox even if the plugin has been installed successfully and that IE must be used in that case but i cannot get streaming Real media to play in IE ... and now google and i must shake hands and say so long. further research and all efforts must come to a halt. i must close my mind to this and move on to other things because i'm becoming so frustrated that my productivity is decreasing as is the time left in the day.

so, without further fuss ... the ability to use real alternative to play streaming Real media with firefox has officially been tabled.

while i'm at it ... another thing i've been trying to do this weekend is use a video editing software to extract a piece of video out of it's original context but that too is proving to be harder to accomplish than several hours of research and effort can achieve. the extracted video and audio do not match up.

so, i officially shelve that task (for now).

though i'm feeling defeated now, i'll eventually figure it out ... it may take me a L-O-N-G time to get there.

oh, why am i trying to do these things you ask?

well i want to listen to BBC radio and they offer their service in streaming Real media and well, one can download RealPlayer but i don't want RealPlayer on my machine since there has been controversy over its use of annoying ads and popups as well as privacy concerns. plus i'd rather use the lighter Real Alternative; disk space and resource usage are becoming the number one issues for me when installing new stuff.

and i'm trying to extract some parts of some video clips from their original contexts - parts that i find humorous, fun or thought provoking - so that i can keep them and watch at a later time or post to my blog or whatever, without having to keep the original file.

but ... good night to those tasks. now ... on to something else ... ? what? yoga? sleep? online chat with friends? read? listen to music? iron? clean? eat? go for a walk? shower? paint my nails? lesson preparation for crapy school teaching little, screaming, yelling, crazy korean brats? .... did i just say all of that out loud or was i just thinking that???