Splicing AVIs: mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -forceidx -o spliced.avi file1.avi file2.avi ... filen.avi

Handbrake is good, but in my experience it has some drawbacks. The crop detection is not robust. Try ripping a movie like "the usual suspects" that has almost all black opening credits and you'll get something like an 80x80 file. It also doesn't support some of the more esoteric quality options and video filters like mencoder.

I used to use handbrake for an easy solution, but I've spent the past year or so slowly creating a sh script that works using a combination of lsdvd, awk, sed, mplayer and mencoder that will basically transcode anything you throw at it. Then you either rip straight from your dvd or an ISO.

If you check the mencoder-users mailing list you can find several of those type scripts out there.

But word is still incredibly stupid about many things. Ironically enough, I have spent this entire week going over an operating manual trying to reformat it for an ISO audit.

Word has no problems breaking a table across a page where it leaves ONE row at the bottom of a page, then duplicates that header row at the top of the next.

The sectioning was driving me batty, and so easy to screw up.

There was no way to "lock in" a style. Somehow I had lines that were formatted as "Heading 3", but were NOT formatted like heading 3. So, choosing "Heading 3" from the dropdown did what... UPDATED the "Heading 3" style instead of CHANGING the text I selected to "Heading 3", wtf.

Then I had somehow a rogue invisible figure that was throwing off the numbering of all my other figures. Even with all characters revealed, I could not find the ghost number. Ended up having to delete all the captions from all figures and re-create them for the numbers to work out properly.

It's just so maddening to have to deal with Word because they have to be in a format that everyone is comfortable with editing. Every 5 minutes I'm thinking "I wouldn't have THIS problem with LaTeX!".

You might be confusing him with iGor, inventor of the iNet.

Watch out for the man with the golden gun...