Author: Kellie

Tuesday Ramble

I’ve been trying to get over this virus the last couple of days. It saps my energy so that I get tired very quickly. That makes it hard to find time to do the things that I have to get done, much less the more or less optional activities like blogging. That doesn’t mean that I’m any less committed to blogging daily, just that I’ve had a temporary set back.

I finally started getting something tangible accomplished at work today. I have been studying various Microsoft Enterprise Frameworks like BizTalk and SharePoint. I made very little progress with the frameworks but yesterday I decided to punt and implement the functionality with a simple Java program. Twenty four hours later and I had implemented 90% of the functionality that I had been struggling to implement for weeks with the Microsoft tools. Now I’m not being critical of Microsoft and I admit that I’m much more experienced with Java than I am with .NET or any of the Microsoft languages and frameworks, but this is ridiculous.

I’m going to post this and go to bed. I’m exhausted. It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow. Hell, the whole rest of the week is going to be hectic.

Sick Day Ramble

Today I stayed home sick. I took a long nap. I feel better than I did. Which is good because the last time I stayed home sick, the air conditioner quit and I spent the day trying to figure out what went wrong with it and didn’t get any rest. I felt a lot worse today than I did that time. I wouldn’t have done well if I had been confronted with a crisis today.

This week I discovered a new TV show on Showtime. It’s called Californication and it stars David Duchovny. What an emotional roller coaster ride. The episode I saw on Monday was the fifth one. I went back today and watched episodes one and two. That leaves me two more episodes to watch until I catch up. It is an incredibly well written and well produced series. The characters are quirky but likable. I love it.

I relate very strongly to Duchovny’s character on a fundamental level. Not that I have the kind of sex life that he has. That would be strictly in my dreams. Rather, I relate to the fact that he is basically a good guy that is trying to practice his profession (writer) and struggles with an environment hostile to his process. He pines for his beloved New York. But, as we all must do, he has to adapt or die.

I finally feel a little better. I’m going to venture out to get carry out supper. It’s SciFi Friday – Dr. Who, Flash Gordon, and Pain Killer Jane. I have missed so much of Pain Killer Jane that I usually don’t watch it any more. I’m not a big fan of violent thrillers. I prefer the more cerebral mystery/scifi/adventure type shows.

Balance, Goals, and a List

I am struggling for balance. There is so much that I want to do and I’m realizing that I only have a short time to do everything that I’m going to do. It really brings home the importance of prioritization. I started writing this entry in an attempt to follow through on my resolve to make blogging a regular part of my life. But as I write I am thinking and what I’m learning from this introspection is that blogging is a tool for refining my thinking on various subjects. Paul Graham pointed out that the word essay means to explore. That captures a lot of the value of blogging to me.

So, I’ll talk a little bit about some of the things that I want to accomplish. In this first pass, I’ll focus on listing them without assigning priorities or time frames. I think it is important to do this in order to keep from getting bogged down in details and missing the big picture. I also want to go ahead and post what I write in this session, even though it probably won’t be comprehensive, in order to keep the flow going. Then, when I’ve listed most of the things that I want to do, I’ll start elaborating on them, prioritizing them, and trying to establish the time frame that I plan to accomplish them in. I think a bullet list will be appropriate for this first pass.

  • Write an episode of The Gentry.
  • Write and produce a short video for entry into film festivals.
  • Play and record music.
  • Write fiction.
  • Write software.
  • Experiment with my robot.
  • Build a bigger robot from scratch.
  • Put a ham station on the air.
  • Build ham gear.
  • Go for daily walks.
  • Swim occasionally.
  • Live in Great Britain for a year or two.
  • See Europe.
  • Write something every day.
  • Meet some of my You Tube friends face to face.
  • Pay attention to Pam.
  • See America.
  • Post more videos to You Tube.

That’s a start anyway. I captured a lot of my aspirations. This will give me something to think about for a while. I just need to overcome inertia. As the Nike motto says, just do it!

Getting Settled In to the Vloggerhood

I’ve been producing videos on You Tube since September of 2006. I have yet to follow through with my original plan and produce a short fictional video to post. Maybe some day I will make my video short story as I call it. In the mean time I have been very busy.

I have posted a documentary of my father-in-law’s 79th birthday party (my first video on You Tube). I’ve posted the obligatory cute animal video. I’ve posted a number of videos responding to questions or challenges or entering contests. I’ve posted a how-to video. The how-to video got me featured on the front page of Live Video.

I’ve also produced several vlog videos. Vlogs are the video equivalent of blogs. But you knew that, didn’t you? I sometimes think that I only have two kinds of visitors here, those that randomly stumble across my site, never to return and those that just want to post comment spam.

That’s a big difference that I’ve noticed between this blog and my You Tube videos. My videos are actually seen by other people, a good many of whom I had never met before they saw my videos and started interacting with me. Vlogging is two way communication. Blogging, not as much so. It could be, but it never has been for me with this site.

I’ve noticed a pattern in my posting of videos. I seem to make a flurry of posts approximately once a month. I’m hoping to use this observation to change this behavior. I guess time will tell.

I also realized that I am really engaged with the individual vloggers that I subscribe to. I care about what is going on in their lives and I miss them when they don’t post for several days. This has motivated me to try to post more frequently than once a month.

One of the vloggers that I subscribe to goes by the screenname of UpDownMostly. Tim is a good guy. I’m pretty sure he lives in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. He is incredibly active in the You Tube community. He is a role model for me. He watches more videos than I can imagine being able to watch and makes at least half a dozen videos a day, primarily video responses.

I guess the essence of this engagement that I’m talking about is interaction, both through text comments and video responses. When it comes right down to it, I’m addicted to the You Tube community. But is it an addiction to want to participate in a community like this. I may joke about it being an addiction but I really don’t think it is. I think it is just a normal human desire to interact with and belong to a community.

Quick (relatively) Update

So much has happened since my last post. I thought I’d get back in the swing of blogging by catching folks up. I figure if you’re not interested in what’s going on with me, nobody is forcing you to read this :-).

First, and by far most importantly, I got a new MacBook! This is so exciting for me. It has a built-in web cam so vlogging is now a breeze. I still intend to make video shorts with the Canon Elura 100 (my DV palmcorder), but I don’t have to go to the trouble to set up the tripod just to record a vlog.

I’ve gotten totally addicted to the community aspect of YouTube/LiveVideo (hereafter referred to as YT). I have to check in on what my friends are doing every day. I still use text commenting for most of my interactions but when I have something to say that doesn’t fit in a comment, I make a video response.

That kind-of explains one of the reasons I haven’t posted here in so long. I use this blog as a platform for publishing my opinion on various topics. The only thing is, my blog is largely unread. My posts on YT get some traffic, and even better, I get feedback from folks. I know, I’ve got comments turned off here. But that’s only because all I ever got were comment SPAM!

We finally got the external webcams to work on my wife’s ibook, after her new MacBook arrived. You don’t really think I could get a new MacBook without getting her one too :-). Now my daughter has my wife’s old G4 iBook, her boyfriend has her old G3 iBook and everyone is happy for the time being.

We discovered Stickam just before we got the new MacBooks. My wife is well on her way to Stickam addiction. I’m afraid I’m not far behind. In case you don’t know, Stickam is a sight that combines interactive video and text chat with a kind of MySpace like home page (I think they may be owned by the same company as MySpace). You can post video, audio, and still pictures to your page. You can make friends and hang out in each others rooms. You can create chat rooms to hold meetings in. I’m still a little fuzzy about all the details. It’s kind of overwhelming at first.

I also discovered a new blog that I love (thanks to revbob over on Ex Cathedra) called The Sheila Variations. She’s a very cool, very literate, artsy type person with neat friends and interesting opinions. I’ve added her to my daily browsing list.

This is turning into a novel. I’ve covered most of the high points so I’ll finish this up and post it. I intend to post more frequently now that Spike (that’s my MacBook’s name) is my constant companion. Cheers!

Yet Another Frustration!

When I got home last night, I discovered that the webcams that Pam and I had ordered for our computers had arrived. Initially, I was really excited. Pam was already a little frustrated. She couldn’t find the Mac drivers on the disk that came with the webcam. I reminded her that the eBay listing had mentioned the fact that you had to download Mac drivers for the camera.

I poked around and found the seller’s web site and found the links for the Mac drivers for our computers. There was one version for Mac 0S 10.3 and another version for Mac OS 10.4. Since we both have older Macs, we have never upgraded to 10.4. I tried installing the 10.3 drivers repeatedly on both our machines. It always failed near the end of the installation. I installed the Windows version of the drivers on a PC laptop that I have and the camera worked fine. This convinced me that the problem was with the Mac driver software.
Finally, I got Pam to write the seller and ask for the drivers. They replied with an email that had both drivers attached. They were identical to the ones I had downloaded from the web. She wrote back telling them the problems we were having and we haven’t heard back from them yet.

Needless to say, we were both very disappointed. I hope the vendor comes through with fixed drivers soon. I’m going to see if I can find any other source for drivers for the camera. The camera is a Frisby model 106 webcam. The image quality is really very good.

Look out internet, here I come!

Well, Santa came. My video camera and my daughter’s still camera arrived Monday afternoon. The still camera was dead on arrival and I had to get a return authorization and send it back for exchange on Tuesday. The video camera however is awesome. I spent much of Tuesday reading the manual and I taped and edited a couple of videos. I’m beginning to get the hang of iMovie.

Pam ordered us two web cams for our computers. We will be on stickam before you know it. I’ll probably also use the web camera for vlogging at least some of the time. I’ve got a list of videos I plan to make as long as your arm. Check out javajini and mslollipop on YouTube and javajini and MsLollipop on LiveVideo.

I feel like a kid waiting on Santa Claus

I’ve got to make this quick but I just had to make a post, both because I want to keep my resolution to post a couple of times a week and because I’m so excited. The check was in the mail yesterday and I ordered Erin’s Coolpix S10 and my Canon Elura 100 last night. I got the email that they shipped today. I expect they will arrive either Friday or Monday. I am so excited I can barely stand it.

Pam and I talked about making videos this morning. She seems pretty excited about making some videos of her own. We were talking about producing some video podcasts as well as making videos to post to YouTube and/or LiveVideo.

I hope YouTube gets its act together. I think LiveVideo has a definite jump on them right now. Competition is a good thing though and I hope that YouTube doesn’t fall apart as a result of all their problems.

Finding Old Friends

I was following a link to a band’s page on MySpace last night when I remembered that I have a MySpace page so I logged in and checked it out. I had forgotten that I had entered my High School in my profile so I decided to check out who else had a MySpace account that graduated when I did. The amazing thing was I found a friend that I hadn’t seen or talked to since High School. I sent him a message but I haven’t heard back from him yet.

After that, I spent several hours filling in details on my MySpace account and looking for other people I knew. I found the pages of two of my current friends and sent them friend requests. I also found both of Pam’s pages and sent her friend requests. Of all these friend requests, the only one that has responded so far has been Pam. I thought I had found Erin’s account so I sent her a friend request. When she got home from work she told me that she didn’t have a MySpace account. Oops!

While I was updating my MySpace profile I posted a blog post pointing anybody that was viewing my account there to this blog. Maybe this will generate some traffic here. I hope so. I’d love to get some readers. I suppose if I were to write more interesting posts, I might get more readers. Naw, what am I thinking? People love to read boring drivel like this.