July 2004 Archives

How to cope in an Emergency

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Cummfy Banana - no explanation at all provided here - you'll just have to go and look for yourselves!!

When will this horrible drizzly gery overcast muggy depressing wet weather end? It's July ferchrissakes, not March. I haven't been out on my new bike for over a month, and haven't been for a walk up a hill for a fortnight. And when I last went for a walk on a hill, I got drenched. Come on, the summer's going to be over soon and I won't have had a chance to get some fresh air. When I go out for some exercise I want to be able to enjoy it, not endure it. I'll be the first to admit I'm a fair-weather person, and this is definately not fair weather.

I'm going to change species so that I can enjoy this weather more. Ready? Ok then.

Quack.

Last night I saw Schindler's List on DVD. It's not the first time I'd seen this film, I went to see it in the cinema when it was first released, and I've owned it on video for a while. But it's the sort of film that stands up to repeated viewings, even though I can only stand to watch it every couple of years or so. My cousin rented the DVD from user comments on the Internet Movie Database. Most people commented on the fine acting and directing. One thought that occurred to me, though, was that we should be grateful we don't live in a world where this sort of thing still happens. But then I had a re-think. We do still live in a world where this sort of thing still happens, it just doesn't happen in the part I live in. I can get in my car and drive to work, go to the corner shop, practice my religion (if I was that way inclined) and look at other people in the street without fear of having a bullet put in my head simply beacuse I am who I am. For that, I am grateful. Most people don't even think about it - they just carry on their daily business as normal. Until, of course, the worst happens and some army or other marches in, causing chaos and destruction in their wake.

I'm not a political person, so I can't comement on more recent atrocities. All I know is that they have happened, and it seems to me that in a so-called civilised world we should have learned the lessons from the first half of the twentieth century. It appears we haven't completely taken heed of them.

I urge everyone to see Schindler's list. It will make you laugh and cry, and it will also make you take a step back and think about the world you live in. It's not merely a film about Nazis and Jews in the Second World War, it's a film about humanity and inhumanity.

While making the film, Steven Spielberg set up the Shoah foundation in order to record the testimonies of those who survived the holocaust. Again, I urge everyone to take a look at it and, if possible, make a donation. At the very least, be aware that it exists and make your children aware of it. This sort of education is just one way that we can endeavour to make the world a safer place in the future.

I'll get down off my soap-box now.

It's about time I mentioned one of my favourite hobbies on this blog. No, not that one, the other one. Digital Video Editing. I first got into this about three years ago when a product called Edit Studio from Pure Motion appeared on a magazine cover disc. I'd had a camcorder since about 1990, and had always tried to make my recordings watchable by editing it straight onto a VHS tape. But the idea of being able to edit videos on a computer, to do it properly and make it look really professional really appealed to me. My son was 18 months old at the time so I had lots of things to film :-)

I was hooked straight away. I've kept with Edit Studio, because it does everything I need it to do, and doesn't cost the earth. The service and support is first rate, as well, which counts for a lot these days. As soon as I could afford it I got a digital camcorder which not only improved the picture quality, but also made it easier to get the video on to the computer in the first place, and I could copy the edited video back to a DV Tape to copy to VHS later.

With the latest version of Edit Studio, the guys at Pure Motion wrote a Software Development Kit (SDK) which allows you to write your own effects which you can then plug in to the program. Being no good at C++ however meant I was not able to write my own effects. I had to suggest ideas to other people who spent time and effort converting my ideas into something usable. A couple of these ideas (bounce and origami) were developed by Tracy at Rosa Negra. Then a very enterprising chap called Jamie Mueller wrote an effect he called "General Expression". The idea behind this effect is that you could specify your own mathematical formula to define what happened to the video. I spent last weekend writing a couple of effects ("one pin" and "meltdown"). It's extremely time-consuming, but it keeps me off the streets hehehe. This is one reason why I haven't updated the blog for a while, I've been busy elsewhere.

I've also been evaluating DVD-Lab, which lets me put my finished movies onto a DVD with menus and everything else, and as soon as I can afford it I'm going to get a copy of that as well. I already have a DVD writer, but all I'm using it for is to make backup copies of my son's DVD's, in case the originals get scratched. For this I use DVD Shrink, a very neat little freebie that recompresses the data on a DVD and makes it all fit onto a single layer disc.

Now all I need to do is catch up on the three and a half hours of unedited video currently sitting on my hard drive!

I feel uncomfortable. Bloated. Way too big. Fat. I shouldn't be feeling this way, I've been trying to improve my diet and do more exercise all year. Trouble is, although I'm not eating as much crap as I used to, I'm eating more in general, so I'm still not losing any weight. Also, even though I am doing a bit of walking and a bit of cycling (weather permitting) I'm not doing enough, so I'm still not losing any weight.

I think I need to cut out bread and starchy stuff. And coke. I drink way too much diet coke in the summer. If I have bread in the house all I want to eat is sandwiches. And if I'm cutting out the sandwiches I'm also going to need to find different things to put in a packed lunch. I'm going to get some sealable containers and bring in stuff like a hardboiled egg, some cheese and a rice pudding. Maybe a bit of apple. But I've got to be careful not to bring in three times as much stuff just beacuse it's healthy for me. It still has calories in! Hopefully a change to a fresher diet will give me back a little spring in my step. It's supposed to be summer, it's been raining for about a week solid, I'm still stuck in a windowless office all day and to cap it all I'm going to have to make some serious cutbacks somewhere if I'm going to make ends meet, which doesn't all add up to a happy chappy. Cue violins.

See how long this one lasts, eh?

Ok, is it SpiderMan or Spider-Man? Is he hyphenated or not? And does it make a blind bit of difference how he spells his name? I demand to know the truth at once!

aach, who cares? He's just another superhero, the world has too many of those already...

I'm still in pain. 36 hours later, and I still hurt. That'll teach me. Never ever ever again. Until the next time, of course. You think it's going to be fun before you start, and it really is quite pleasant to begin with, but then your back starts to hurt a bit, and after that it's just downhill all the way. I'll tell you something though, I slept like a baby afterwards. So did my sister-in-law. We did it together, you see. She's in as much pain as I am, and she's also saying things like "Never again" and "It seemed like a good idea at the time". And it was her idea, nothing to do with me. I was going to spend the evening having a pleasant bike ride before she called and made an offer I couldn't refuse. Still, made a change from watching tv all night, doesn't it? Three and a half hours we were at it, and we kept a fair pace right till the end, when neither of us could face any more. I say never again, but I'm sure I won't be able to resist temptation in the future. Neither will my sister-in-law. She'll phone me again, or I might call her, and then we'll be off together again doing it. It's better when there's just the two of us, no-one else to get in the way, no distractions, no phone calls. You can do what you want, when you want. Please yourself, as it were. Next time I think we're going to plan ahead and give ourselves a bit longer. Pace ourselves better, see if we can make it last four or maybe even five hours. We might even be able to go all the way next time.

We met at Victoria Station at 7pm. We planned to go back to my house. But by 10:30 it was getting dark and we were both getting tired. Still, nine miles isn't a bad walk for an evening, is it? Didn't quite do the full eleven miles we planned, but last time I walked that it took me six hours. Better luck next time, eh?

Lighter tricks - amaze and astound your friends with your dexterity involving a Zippo lighter!
The Internet Archive - a place for public domain audio, video and text files to reside. Check out "Computer Chronicles" in the video section, not only to find out what was cutting edge in computer technology back in 1984, but also to have a good laugh at the clothes people were wearing at the time :-)

Even though my son's only just got back from Spain, he's off around the world again. This time he's off to Disneyland Paris as part of his grandpa's 60th birthday celebrations. He's been looking forward to it for weeks, if not months, and I really hope the weather holds up for them. I had a call from my ex this morning asking me if I still had the battery charger for our old camcorder. (In the divorce we shared custody of the camcorder but since I could never get it back off her when I needed it I let her keep it and bought my own). As far as I'm aware she's got the charger for it but as all the stuff from her house is in storage at the moment (don't ask, it's another long story) she can't lay her hands on it. So I offered to lend her my camcorder for the weekend - she'd better not break it or there'll be hell to pay heheheh

I've been trying to catch up on all the unedited video footage I've taken of my son. I have snippets of clips lying around on various camcorder tapes and I thought I'd better do something about tidying them all up. Some of the footage dated back to mid-2002, which gives you an indication of just how far behind I was with all this! I think all I'll do with it is cut out the obviously crap bits and just stick it on a DVD... not much of it lends itself to being a watchable movie or anything like that, but it's a shame to throw away random bits of video just because you can't find anywhere proper to put it. It's all memories, even the bits of him playing with building blocks is just as valid as a day trip to the beach. Aren't they?