Confined Wisdom

Ah, Christmas. The holidays. Festive cheer and all that. Hanukkah, even. The season to be jolly. A time of giving. But you’re cheap, because you’re desi. At least I am. It’s my sickness, and I’m living with it. So I came up with this cheap ass (and somewhat illegal) way of giving presents to my foolish friends. I spent most of November and December doing it, but it’s finally done, and these fools will see it as an act of effort, when it really is just plain cheap. And quite crap. But you gotta try it, at least for Holidays 2010.

I am blessed with technophobic friends, in abundance. People who miss using VCRs because that whole “DVD thingy” is too complicated. People who can’t solve a minor PC problem, and call me in desperation, only to find out that their Wi-Fi wasn’t switched on. People who don’t understand that whole “download” thing (“I don’t know where I saved it!!”). If you think I’m joking, come to Dubai – I will give you these idiots in truck loads.

So, anyways, I came up with this ingenious idea this year. For all my technophobic friends, I made them DVDs – of TV shows, of movies, of whatever. Stuff they like (see, there was some effort and thought). Like a friend of mine wants the entire Entourage series, so I gave him that. Here’s a quick guide on how to go about being cheap:

1. Once you know what your friends like, find a place online where you can get them. Most people prefer torrents, but I find them a tad slow, and it just eats up my Internet speed, and, depending on seeders, can stop working. I prefer websites that stream movies and TV shows, in decent enough quality. There’s a conflict here. If you want true HD quality, you will most probably have to go for the torrents. However, most of the time, especially for the newer movies and shows, the streaming websites present good enough quality to be watched on TV. Make sure you go to free websites. There are websites that charge you. Fuck them, we’re trying to be cheap here. Google something.

2. If you are doing this for a technophobic, and generally tech unsavvy friend, then I would assume you are the opposite. So, I’m counting on you not using Internet Explorer. Because that’s shit. Get Firefox if you don’t already have it. I’m counting on you here, don’t fucking IE me.

3. Now that Firefox is sitting snugly on your desktop, you will first notice that it kicks IE’s ass hands down. Speed, connectivity, plug-ins – everything. What you do now is go here and download a nifty little plug-in called Download Helper. This is where awesomeness kicks in. Download Helper is something that shows up in your toolbar and sits there, inactive, waiting until you visit a website (YouTube, Metacafe, whatever!!!) that has streaming video. It then becomes active.

You can now download this video! Yes, you can. Most of the time, YouTube videos are in MP4 format, but you don’t really need YouTube videos. You want movies and TV shows. More often than not, you will find them available in one of two formats: AVI or FLV. Lucky for you, Download Helper comes with a built-in conversion plug-in that can convert your download to an MP4 format (and a few others). I personally prefer to have everything in AVI, since I use a Mac, and those are easily played through QuickTime. Download everything you need and place them in folders. Make sure everything works in entirety.

4. Go out and by a few boxes of DVD-R’s. You only want the best for your friends, so I recommend Imation. Those are really good quality. Start burning your shit now. Download Toast (my favorite) for Macs or Nero for PCs and burn the movies/seasons in DVD format, so they play one after the other.

5. This last step isn’t necessary, but advised, because packaging is everything sometimes. Go and Google the posters for these gems that you found, get color prints and cut them out to fit in the jewel cases. All done here.

Or, you can just buy thoughtful presents, whatever man. I’m not endorsing this shit, it’s just a recommendation. Don’t kill the messenger. Buy those expensive box sets from Virgin. Those ass friends of yours aren’t actually gonna watch the Behind-the-Scenes extras! Yeah, I know, I’m a bastard. But I’m a bastard with happy, foolish friends, who are gonna be ecstatic when they receive their pirated versions of TV shows and movies this Christmas.

Happy Holidays everyone.