• Off to Hawaii

    July 8, 2010 / No Comments

    We are all packed and ready to head off to the airport on our way to Hawaii.  We got the Wife’s cousin staying here to keep and eye on the house, and keep the pets fed.  It should be a fun time, but a week is going to be a long time to be away from home.  I like being at home.

    It’s crazy the amount of technology two people need to take with them on vacation.  We have:

    • Camera
    • 4 disposable water cameras for snorkeling
    • Kodak Zi8 video camera
    • Two laptops
    • 4 iPods (The wife and I each have a touch for apps and internet and another one for music)
    • 2 Blackberries
    • My iPad
    • Our GPS
    • and a rented MiFi to share internet to all our devices

    It’s going to be a long plane ride, but with my iPad and Audiobooks I have more than enough to keep me busy.  In fact I really wouldn’t mind a longer flight.  The Wife is another story.  I am sure she will be bored out of her mind.

    The thing I will probably miss is Twitter.  I may find time to post from time to time, but I wont be able to read and keep up with it.  Normally I keep up with my Twitter stream during my waking hours pretty easily.  It’s going to bug me a bit not being on top of everything, and knowing what’s going on, but I guess that’s what a vacation is for; to get away from it all — or at least most — of it for a while.

    My blog will probably be a little quiet for the week.  I might use Posterous to post some pictures if I have time, but I plan on being pretty busy just having fun.

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  • Blogging Platforms

    July 4, 2010 / No Comments

    I started blogging in late 2000 when I first got broadband internet.  Sometimes I wish I knew the exact date, or even had some of my old archives, but I didn’t bother taking that stuff with my when I switched to different platforms over the years.

    It’s kind of amazing looking at all the different platforms out there now.  When I started blogging there was basically Blogger, or you ran blogging software on your own server.  I started with blogger, but it was a little limiting back then, and it didn’t even allow commenting.  Now with Twitter and Facebook is seems like people are blogging less and less, and probably commenting less too.  I rarely ever comment on blogs, and really couldn’t care less if I had commenting on my blog now.

    Blogger has greatly improved since last time I used it, and there are many other blogging options now.  If I was to start blogging right now services like Posterous, Tumblr, or Squarespace would be very tempting.

    Posterous has been trying to get people to switch to them these past couple weeks.  I really like Posterous, but I just use it to easily post things here.  It has made it much easier for me to quickly share stuff on my blog that I otherwise wouldn’t bother to spend the time.  That’s really the reason I blog anyway.  I don’t consider myself the best writer, or even like writing all that much, but I love sharing cool things I find in the interwebs.

    I’m not going to switch blogging services though.  As tempting as it may be, I like the greater control I have running my own server.

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  • Learning Final Cut Express

    June 28, 2010 / No Comments

    Final Cut Express 4I 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.

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  • Saying Goodbye to a Few Podcasts

    June 26, 2010 / No Comments

    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.

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