phanboy

Apologies in advance if this is slightly off-topic.

I'm in my mid-30s and never been in a serious relationship, and I think I'm OK with this. As I've gotten older, I've had less and less infatuation with girls. At least for me, I always thought this early stage a relationship is what kick starts it, and if there's still something there in a few months, it might turn into something more lasting.

So a question for those who started serious relationships later in life, did you also find there to be a bit less passion early on, and how did you get over that?

tl;dr: How do you build a relationship early-on when there isn't much passion?

If I'm encoding mpeg2 targeting a DVD, in general, am I better off using qscale or multi-pass with VBR targeting the size of the disc? I'd think multi-pass, especially if I care about size at all.

A bit more context: I'm converting VHS do DVDs. I settled on 352x480 because VHS doesn't really capture more information, and at that resolution, I think I should be able to get 4 hours of video on a 4.7 GB DVD.

One of my bigger gripes with Windows is the default sound theme, specifically the asterisk/exclamation sound. I get it when I change the system volume or hit backspace one too many times in WSL, and it's just too jarring for those actions. It's annoying enough that I'd even pay for a well-designed, more subtle set of system sounds. Any recommendations?

I'm digitizing some old VHS tapes. I picked up a decent capture card and a JVC HR-S7600U VCR. I did a test capture of a commercially duplicated tape, and it came out as good as could be expected. Then I tried to capture a home video, and parts came out ok, but parts came out like this:

https://elasticbeanstalk-us-east-1-221030052028.s3.amazonaws.com/vhs-noise.mp4

Interestingly, the sound was unaffected. Is this just a tracking issue? Is there anything that can be done about it?

http://imgur.com/a/5zWsa

This is an Adapteva Parallella-16 Desktop Computer that I got from their Kickstarter campaign that I never got around to using. It's an ARM Cortex-A9-based computer with a 16-core coprocessor for parallel computing. I comes in a case, but reports are that you need a fan. I'm asking $70.

• Official site
• Wikipedia entry

First off, I'm 29 and starting to consider looking into possibly (you know, someday) buying a house. My FICO score's decent (787), but after trying to increase the limit on a credit card I rarely use and getting rejected, I'm getting a tad paranoid.

My credit history is around 10 years old, utilization is low (5%) and I have around $35,000 available on my cards. I pay my bills on time, etc. But that's it; I don't have a car loan or student loans.

I don't need a new car, I'm not going to school, and all I need to buy is a new mattress. Any ideas? And yes, I have enough cash to, say, buy a car...it'd just be a bit silly.

For a while, I've been buying shoes that are far too big. When I measured my feet, they seem to be 8's, but I've been in 12's for 8+ years. Supposedly, when I was a kid, I had wide feet, but when I got dress shes around 18, this supposedly wasn't the case. Those were 9.5's, but there was a decent amount of room for the toes.

After a pair that were comically long, I tried some that were shorter, and there was still too much space past my toes. I bought some 8's (linked below). There's still a bit of room past my big toe, but the rest are squished, and there's barely enough tongue before there's a gap.

I feel like the tips of my feet are too boxy and my feet are too tall. Any ideas what

http://imgur.com/a/sNXkC