First off, the Chicago Tribune ran a story about the Fermilab code letter, and I was flattered to be interviewed for the story. We’re still working on the middle section of the letter, so if anyone has any ideas, don’t be shy.

Secondly, I had a few people contact me asking how I embedded a high quality version the YouTube video for my Five Dollar Laser Show post. It’s surprisingly easy, you just need to add a little flag to the embed code and you’re ready to run.

For example, here’s the embed code that YouTube will give you:

<object width=”425″ height=”350″> <param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/mqe6Hg9U8JY”> </param> <embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/mqe6Hg9U8JY” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”425″ height=”350″> </embed> </object>

We need to add “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18″ in after the link to our video (remember to change it in both the param and embed tags), giving us:

<object width=”425″ height=”350″> <param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/mqe6Hg9U8JY&ap=%2526fmt%3D18 “> </param> <embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/mqe6Hg9U8JY&ap=%2526fmt%3D18 ” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”425″ height=”350″> </embed> </object>

If you’re uploading high quality video to YouTube and will be linking to it via your blog/webpage, it’s a great little trick. There’s a drastic increase in quality for very little difference in load time.

For instance, compare the default quality YouTube video:

To the high quality YouTube video:

Far less compression artifacts, and an overall better picture. Highly recommended!