June 2010
I had a little free time this weekend, so I thought I would try to wrap my head around Final Cut Express. Video editing and photo editing are both things I want to learn to do better, but I don’t do it enough to learn. I am hoping to get a bunch of video from Hawaii and hopefully put together some good videos.
In the past iMovie was just fine for me, but the new version drives me crazy. It’s nice for quick and easy things, but it just feels much more limiting than the older version was. So it was time for me to upgrade to Final Cut Express.
When I first started playing around with Final Cut Express I was lost, but I found an incredible free tutorial online over at IzzyVideo.com. He has a free beginners guide course, and it was so good it made we want to be a subscriber to get his paid videos, but his prices are a little more then I want to spend on something I don’t do all that often.
With the help of the tutorial I feel I can use Final Cut Express as proficient has I did the old version of iMovie, but I still have a lot of learning and playing around with to do. I just need to get off my butt and make more videos so I have more to play around with.
via scienceblogs.com
Now that one hell of a hello world program.
I have been a huge podcast listener since first discovering podcasting in October of 2004. Those were some exciting times. While I was never a creator, I enjoyed watching all the shows grow and become very popular. People were making shows for the fun of it — to be part of a community. I was tempted to create some kind of show, but I was spending too much time enjoying everybody else to have time to create anything myself.
Times have really changed. A lot of podcasts are making money now, and people are doing it full time. That’s great for the people involved, but sad when business comes before the shows.
This week three of the podcasts I listen to are no more. CNET’s Gadgetts, TWiT’s Maxwell’s House, and Geek Brief are all no more.
I will miss Gadgetts, but I am sure I will still hear from everybody on other CNET podcasts that I listen to. Cali Lews has had some personal and what sounds like business issues with Mevio, but it looks like she is moving over to Revision3 with a new show called Geek Beat, which looks to be very similar to Geek Brief, so I won’t be missing much there.
The one guy I am really going to miss is Ray Maxwell. He is like the grandfather I never had. He has so many great stories from his life. I was a little disappointed when TWiT wanted him to focus his show to aviation only. I enjoyed his many other topics better, but now that I look back, I think they were hoping that having a specific topic would draw advertisers.
He said he is going to appear on other TWiT shows from time to time, but you know how that goes. Who really knows how often he will be on. I am hoping Dr. Kiki has him on Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour from time to time.
While it’s sad to see good shows go, I am sure they will be replaced by equally good shows. It has been quite amazing watching TWiT grow. I have listened to damn near every show the network has produced, and almost always have one of my three monitors on the live stream.
Podcasting has brought me so much education, and entertainment these past six years. It’s almost total replaced my TV viewing. I bet I only watch 5 hours of TV a week nowadays, and 2.5 hrs of that is Jeopardy. Thank you internet, and thank you podcast producers.
I have been playing around with Google’s embeddable fonts for the last couple weeks. They give a site a little different look without having to worry about anybody else having the fonts installed. There is a fine line between looking different and being easy to read though. Some of the fonts seemed tough to read, and some were missing some special characters. The font selection is a little limited. I finally decided on Vollkorn, and after a few css tweaks, think it looks good. It seems to be working in all the browsers that I have tried. I even opened up IE for the first time in Windows 7 and was surprised that the fonts even worked in IE. If your browser isn’t supported it should fall back to my previous font, Helvetica.
via avclub.com
A month ago I posted the awesome Pavement cover by Motion City Soundtrack. Now Rise Against covers Nirvana’s “Sliver” for the A.V. Club. I’m not a huge Rise Against fan, but you gotta love the Nirvana cover.
Our Hawaii vacation is getting closer and closer. Flights, hotels, car, and excursions are all paid for. I could add it all up, but I am kind of scared to know how much we spent. We have a pretty booked schedule. We wanted to see and do as much as possible while we are there.
I think we are going to have a pretty memorable 10 year anniversary. That day we are taking a helicopter tour over Kilauea volcano, and that evening we are heading to the top of Mauna Kea to do some star gazing. It should be a fun time. On our honeymoon we went to the top of Pikes Peak, and Mauna Kea is at a similar elevation. I’m not sure if there will be any snow up there this time of year, but I am kinda hoping I can throw a snowball in Hawaii.
Right now I am debating if I should just use the hotel’s wifi or rent a mifi for my internet access. The hotels charge $12 a day, but I can rent a mifi for $8 a day. I just wish I knew which one was faster. I am leaning towards the mifi since it’s cheaper, and it will give me internet access on the go too, including the airports that don’t have free wifi.
It should be a great vacation. I am really looking forward to learning a lot about Hawaii. Neither the Wife or I really like to relax on vacations. We like to get out and see and learn as much as possible. That’s what we consider fun. We can relax all we want on our couch when we get back.
via youtube.com
The news is full of idiot sports stars doing stupid things. We need more news stores of the ones doing great things. We lost of of those greats today.
When I was a kid, and much taller than my brother, I use to pretend I was Manute Bol when I blocked his shots. Those were good time. Now my little brother towers over me, but I will never forget those days pretending I was Manute Bol.
I am a big fan of Michael Shermer. I have read many of his books, and am a regular reader of Skeptic Magazine. In this TED video he explains the human tendency to believe strange things.
via boingboing.net
I pretty much love every video of someone playing the Super Mario theme, but this is the first one I have seen of someone playing it in real time.
