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.

Just Venting

Ok. I admit it. I am a YouTube addict. Tonight, I was going to catch up on some of the channels that I am subscribed to and then watch Medium (I’ve got a major crush on Patricia Arquette). I looked up and it was 9:10pm. One of my annoying little quirks is i hate to miss the first of a movie or a TV show. I’d rather not see it at all than come in on it late. I am so disappointed. I know I’ll catch the show in reruns but it makes a strong argument for setting up some kind of DVR so that this doesn’t happen again.

Another thing that’s got me kinda miffed is the fact that the YouTube infrastructure is so overloaded that comment posting and private messaging are not dependable (otherwise known as the dreaded comment-eating monster). I love the social interaction of YouTube. I hate the fact that I never know if my comment really got posted or not. I don’t know who to blame, the original YouTube developers for not implementing a system that would scale or Google for mucking with something that was working and screwing it up. I really don’t know who’s at fault but I WISH THEY WOULD GET IT FIXED!!!!!! Pardon my rant.

I am also extremely frustrated by the situation at work. Not to put too fine a point on it but I am stuck twiddling my thumbs, taking mandatory training classes while the powers that be figure out how to set up our new accounting system so that we can work on actually useful projects.

I once told my dad that I really didn’t have to worry about my employer going out of business. The company is so big that even if they did everything wrong, it would take them 50 years to go bankrupt. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit but that’s how it feels to me.

First post of a new year

So I thought I had disabled comments on all my posts but I’m still getting email to moderate spam comments. There is obviously something about WordPress that I don’t understand. Oh, well.

I am so excited! I’m anticipating getting my new video camera. It is going to be so much fun. I am going to get Pam a webcam too. She has really taken to YouTube. She wants to be able to leave video responses. I understand. I do too.

Dave Winer says that the distinguishing characteristic of a blog is the unedited voice of a person. He goes on to explain that he means that a single individual expresses their opinions without undue influence from an editorial figure. I like this definition. I see the same kind of content in the video blogs on YouTube.

To kind of tie these ideas together, the reason I’m so excited is that film/video has always been my media of choice. I look forward to creating video blogs, having video conversations with other YouTubers, creating short fictional videos, creating how-to videos, and things I haven’t even figured out yet. Here’s a quick list of projects that I have in the wings:

  • Javajini intro for The Skinny
  • building my BOEbot
  • making some experimental proof-of-concept sketches for The Gentry
  • start a video podcast on hobby robotics

Anyway, the year is off to a good start. I’m also planning to blog here more than once a month this year. Ah, the best laid plans…