As I type, dozens and dozens of Quicktime movie files are being converted to iPod-acceptable .mpeg files through iTunes. For them, this is near the end of a long journey, a voyage from their original urls to my video iPod. The only problem is, however, that this near-final step will most likely take a few more hours to complete.

Ah, everyone loves the old quicktime movies that LEGO employs the European animation company Ghost A/S to produce every year. The movies add a unique richness to the BIONICLE experience by giving life to the brand's colorful toys. Wouldn't it be great if one could simply pull them out of his pocket to watch them whenever he wanted?

Achieving this goal, as I have painstakingly found out, has turned out to be a very long and frustrating pursuit. Reasons for this may be the fact that I absolutely hate the iTunes software (and, truthfully, anything with a trademark small "i" in front of it); or it may also be the fact that finding all of these movie files and gathering them from various places on the internet has been very difficult as well. Whatever factors are responsible, I can tell you that this seemingly wild goose chase has been one heck of a voya nui ("great journey," for those of you less atuned to the storyline).

I am here to tell you that I have almost come to the end.

The first step was finding all of the movies in the first place. There were some very decent places to visit when looking for the video files: Bionicle.com itself; the Ghost A/S gallery; the Ghost A/S LEGO BIONICLE Archive; Bioniclub.cz; some advertizing company's site that I forgot the name of and doesn't have the movie files anymore anyway; and, before it went down, Bionicle Sector 01. Ever since I discovered the "right-click, save file as..." method of downloading movie files from the web back in 2005, I have been collecting files from the web --

Uhh...

...

...

What's this? Okay, no joke, while I type this, a window has just opened up, reading: "iTunes has encountered an error and needs to close. We apologize for any inconvenience."

*smacks head*

ARE YOU SERIOUS!?!?!?!? It's taken forever to convert those files! Okay, I'm not too worried, just annoyed. I just gotta open up iTunes again to continue converting the files, and it will be just fine. I'm sure that this interruption hasn't affected the files that have already been converted so far.

*goes off to check*

Yes, I was right. No crisis. I just need to start the process up again to finish off the other files.

*goes off to do that*

Alright, I've done that. It's working again. Now, where was I? *scrolls up* Oh, right, the files.

So yeah, I made this special folder on my desktop which held another special folder that held my collection of Bionicle movies that I had been gathering from the web ever since 2005. Here's even an example of what I discovered while tinkering with Quicktime. Anyway, I organized the special folder to my liking, but throughout the better part of 2006, my computer had this bug that made it unable to play the audio to the majority of my movie files. The picture worked fine, but I could not fix the darn sound. The funny thing is that this whole thing started not long after I bought my video iPod and downloaded the iTunes software and a more recent version of Quicktime onto my computer. Well, a month or so ago, the thing somehow fixed itself and just went away, much to my relief. Now I was once again in top-notch shape to get those videos into my pocket. Just a wee problem, though. Actually, a HUGE one. iTunes is the most finnicky software I have ever encountered IN MY LIFE. It's a nightmare -- it takes a long time to do anything; it absolutely must sort EVERYTHING alphabetically, which I don't want it to do all the time; the iPod MUST be ejected before disconnecting the USB cable, or else all of the songs on it get deleted (which I know from experience); and the iPod only accepts its fancy mp3 files -- what a wuss.

Well, the iTunes software wouldn't allow me to import my Bionicle movie files becuase it couldn't recognize the file types (which are classified as "any file"). So, I spent a few minutes just this morning converting them into Quicktime .mov files. If it gets me that much closer to achieving my goal, I'll take the time to do it.

Double-click, File, Save As..., Save in folder..., OK. Double-click, File, Save As..., OK. Double-click, File, Save As..., OK. That goes on several dozen times, and I have a folder full of .mov files just waiting to be imported into iTunes.

Import them, I was able to. I even sorted them into playlists by year. I could actually play them in iTunes! I was very impressed by how the software automatically makes thumbnails for the videos. That was cool, although that does have a downside in that I can't change the darn thumbnails when it picks a bad frame.

Then I hooked up my iPod and tried to make a simple download of the files onto it. Then I get this funny little message saying something along the lines of "Some of the files, inluding [all of them], were unable to be dowloaded because the iPod software does not recognize the file type.

*smacks the already swollen bump on my forehead*

Well, that's what this conversion process is all about. All of my Bionicle .mov files are being converted into .mpeg-4 files, which I will soon be able to finally download onto my iPod. I just have to see how this whole thing turns out.

...!

What's this? It's done! All of the files are done!

Well, BZPower, I'll tell you how it ends later, when I have at last ended it . See you again soon.