Good days, bad days, long days, short days. We all have them. Today mine was long and mostly bad.
For those of you wondering, a MacBook can, in fact, drive a 30″ LCD display at 1900×1200 without a problem. I was actually quite amazed.
It’s too bad I won’t be editing on the mac. You did, in fact read that correctly. No. Editing. With. The. Mac. Here’s why.
iMovie edits pretty good. I’ve got importing of the .dv files down to only a few minutes for each. Perfect. Until it’s time to export that out to burn to a DVD. Today I ran my first reel through iMovie, cropped it and removed the background noise plus trimmed a bit here and there. When all was said and done, I was left with a little more than 10 minutes of video.
That was going to take almost an hour to export to the media browser so iDVD can see it. Yea, I don’t think so.
Ok, let’s give Windows Movie Maker a crack I say. I’ll just import one of these .dv files…(insert tire squealing from rapid application of the brakes here, followed by a very loud crashing noise). Guess what? Yea, WMM doesn’t comprede .dv files.
Of which there are 61.
I got lucky in that it didn’t actually take Visual Hub 6-9 hours to convert those files into wmv. It only took 220 minutes. Good thing because I was afraid I was going to have to leave the Mac there over night and possibly until Friday.
All of the transfers gave me plenty of time to listen to my grandfather get completely frustrated as he sent my almost 80 year old grandmother gallivanting all over town doing some banking. 3 banks spread out over about 20 miles or so. It was pretty. I say she needs a GPS. He agrees.
So my grandparents are now the proud owner of a TomTom 720. It’s all set up, almost all of the address my grandmother needs are in it and it works with her phone. Yes, it has full blue tooth support that works quite nicely.
There is also now a new flatbed scanner which I get to hook up on Friday that will be dedicated to scanning slides, negatives and photos. I’ll be doing that after giving my grandmother a lesson or 3 on working the GPS.
Of course there was dinner, but not after sitting through a bunch of the republican convention first. IMO, these conventions would be way more entertaining if they were less choreographed and fake and had more skantily clad cheerleaders and less politicians. That might just be me tho.
Tomorrow a short jaunt to San Diego to do a quick fix for a customer I have down there, then back to turn in an application and my resume with the school district. I have a guy on the inside, so maybe something will happen.
It was bound to happen sooner or later.
The Family found my blog
A few weeks ago I sent my aunt a link to my first film transfer video. You know, she’s in it and I thought she would get a kick out seeing that, a bit of sneak peak of things to come if you will. Well, she started clicking other things appearantly. Then I got a phone call saying how this is sooo funny or that was funny or interesting. I’m trying to figure out what she was talking about, since nothing on Viddler is that funny. Then I got the lightbulb and the bell.
Oh shit, she found w(t)f.
As she found it, so did a couple of my cousins. I think Mom might have even stopped by.
Oh shit, Mom is here too?
Well, now that you are here, welcome to w(t)f. Everyone, meet Mom, Jeannie and Big L. Mom, Jeanie and Big L, meet everyone. Don’t worry, everyone here is pretty nice.
Otherwise, the video transfer project has moved into Phase 2: sort and organize. After transferring close to 3k feet of film, I am ready to move on. I’m really starting to realize how underpowered the MacBook is too. Even in VisualHub it took hours to convert the files from the camera into DV format ready for editing. I won’t tell you the one time I tried to import from the camera into iMovie it was going to take 90 minutes for 15 minutes worth of video however. Still, better than attempting it on either of my Grandfathers machines, since they are both Pentium 4’s with 512K of RAM. Sure, they would work, but I have a deadline of Christmas I’m trying to hit.
Wednesday the lad starts on his 2nd to last year of High School. Yes, that is correct, he is a Junior.
I’m having a feeling that this year might actually be his year, academically speaking of course. He has been a little more outgoing, actually leaving the house to hang out with friends. He has gone to a few parties. No foolin’. He has a crush on a girl.
And one other thing that I am most proud of him for.
Ever since he was old enough to know better, he has been a helper. Not so much with the help around the house, but help to others, especially those younger or less experienced than he is. With his cousins he would help out with reading. Or make sure that nobody was left behind or not included in a certain activity. He’s a helper.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when he told me he volunteered for something at his school that I am not remembering the name of. It’s a program where Juniors help the freshmen. During orientation, during signup. During the first 2 weeks of school.
He started last week. Never have I seen anyone so excited to get up at 5:30 in the morning to be at school by 7. Why so early? He, being part of the team, had to get everything ready for the freshmen by 7:45.
It started with 2 days of training, 6 hours each. What they needed to do, what they needed to cover, how to act. All of that. After that it was 2 days of orientation where he and a partner had a group of 15 freshmen for 2 hours, during which they showed them around the school and spent a good chunk in a classroom unsupervised reviewing school rules and making sure everyone in the group knew someone on the first day of school.
I think it’s pretty cool.
On Wednesday, when he is riding off wearing his special shirt that lets everyone know he is there to help, I will be especially proud. Because, out of nowhere, he is taking from me, much like I took from my Dad, one of my better traits.
Yea, sometimes it’s cool to be Dad.
Back in January, I issued a challenge to myself and all of the readers of w(t)f. My big one this year was to get Mom to use Flickr.
Mine will be getting Mom to use Flickr. She just bought my camera (her first Amazon.com purchase) and she really digs seeing my shots on the webernets. And she is a bit of a tech junkie. So Flickr is a perfect fit. Keeping in mind that I couldn’t get her to switch, I think I’ll be able to pull this one off no sweat.
The other night I’m sitting around with teh Lad watching Transformers again and my phone rings. It’s Mom. She’s trying to figure out how to setup an account at Yahoo! so she can use Flickr! Of course I helped her and about 1/2 hour later I had an email from her Flickr account saying she had pictures for me to view. Of course, I couldn’t see them since she had them marked Friends and Family and didn’t add me as a contact. I called her back and got that part sorted out and voila!
Mom is using Flickr. Sweet!
Time to come up with another challenge. Maybe a switch from AOL to Gmail?
Talking a bit with the lad yesterday prior to leaving him at school. I get the distinct impression that he is holding something back.
For those that don’t know, or have forgotten, I worked in the restaurant business for just short of 15 years. Needless to say I’m pretty observant and can tell when someone is saying something that might not be on the up-and-up.
It bothered me, the tone he used and his sudden quietness. So I asked him about it when I talked to him after school. He is usually more forthcoming with me when I’m 60 miles (and possibly 2 hours) away. So I asked him why he was acting so weird earlier, and again presented him with the same question.
Reports cards were being handed out yesterday. I asked him what to expect. He said, straight away, same as before. Well, that’s a start, right? I asked him if was still keeping up with getting his classwork turned in, as well as his home work. That’s when he stumbled.
But, when I’m 60 miles away, he gets a little brave and came clean. Of course he isn’t doing his classwork. Of course he isn’t turning his completed homework in. What was I thinking?
Honestly, I think it’s beyond him to do well in school. And, since he isn’t very good at it anyway, and since there isn’t much time left in this school year for him to recover from an F in all of his classes that matter, I figure it’s time to focus instead on what he does well.
So, when I got home last night, he was working on homework. I know he won’t turn it in anyway, so I told him to stop. Then, I told him to go ahead and spend the rest of the night on the internet and/or sending text messages after I gave him his gadgets back. I also asked him why he even bothers going to school in the first place. Since he doesn’t do anything anyway, why waste the time of the teachers, other classmates and himself?
Now I’m going to have to go to his school and somehow talk them into holding him back a year. This should be a load of fun since they wouldn’t hold him back after he failed the 8th grade. Yes, you read that correctly. He failed the 8th grade but was advanced to the 9th. Way to reward bad performance.
The reason? Oh, you are going to love this. When I asked why they wouldn’t hold him back, they said they felt it was PUNISHMENT! What? Really?
Don’t you wish that when you failed at your job, you could keep it? Don’t you wish that you could break the law and get away with it? Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to do whatever you want, whenever you want without any fear of reprisals? Man, that would be so awesome!
But, I live in the real world for the most part. And, here in my world, when someone fails at anything, there is usually some kind of punishment. That’s the way it goes.
I’m thinkin’ about sending him to spend a week with his mother in the flop house full of crazy drug users she lives with. Maybe that will help turn him around.
Or maybe not. I’m out of ideas at this point. Constructive suggestions are always appreciated.
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