Tomorrow the new season of Fringe airs. This is one of the few shows I watch. Perhaps that is because Reality Television has saturated the industry. Either way, I’m happy that Fringe is back tomorrow. Tonight a new episode of Glee is airing. I like it. I attempted to describe it this morning and the best way I could was, “Its basically High School Musical and Camp Rock but for people who don’t have kids.” I love the witty humor. Just the fact that Jane Lynch is on the show is what made me watch it initially. Kristen Chenoweth is coming on for one episode, so that should be good. That woman has got one heck of a voice. I’m pretty sure that in my head this is my replacement for Pushing Daisies. I miss that show
Patrick Swayze died. Got it. Jim Carroll died. Got it. Anybody else? Perhaps I should keep a tally sheet for Kris‘ next Oscar contest. Hmm. Maybe that is a bit sick. Sorry.
The Broncos vs the Pats tonight. I’m listening to it but I am just not in to it. I think I am too tired. I did manage to watch an episode of Top Gear. I hope I get some of my cred back now.
I was putting the kittens to bed and they walked into their room in a line. I swear if they wore suits, it would have looked like a scene from Reservoir Dogs. Sawyer would definitely be Mr. Pink. She’s just crazy enough. Though not crazy enough to be Mr. Blonde.
I use the term kittens on to refer to the younger cats. The cats have their own room that they sleep in so that we don’t turn into unsuspecting victims of play time at two in the morning. They stay out on the nights where we don’t work the next day. Which is pretty much on the weekends. They enjoy it but they do still tend to sleep in their room.
I’ve been trimming down on my freelance work. Not because I am becoming insanely wealthy or anything. Actually I just want to spend more time with my husband when I can. I work 40 hours a week and I drive an hour to work and an hour back. Between that and trying to get some sleep, I want to see him. Even after being together for more than 13 years, I still want to be around my husband.
***News Flash: Patriots lead by a point. ***
Yeah. I think that’s it for tonight. It has taken me a while to write this. Darn football.
The house is all clean. I spent most of the day cleaning everything. All of the linens are washed. The floors are vacuumed and everything is dusted. I just got a bug and went nuts. I managed to mow the little strip of grass in the front yard before it rained. Once it stopped raining, the ground was too saturated to dry out enough to do the larger area of grass on the side of the house. Oh well. At least maybe people won’t park there when they wait for their kids.
I’m excited that Fringe is about to begin. I’m quite anxious to see what happens. It is such a weird yet great show.
I’m tired so I’m really babbling right now. Sorry. I should go to bed instead.
In a recent twitter post, Vonnie mentioned that very few had commented on her post about her dying her daughter’s hair pink. I of course responded with the reason why I didn’t. I tend to read Vonnie’s site via my RSS reader. Unfortunately, this also tends to make my likelyhood of commenting very small. I know that I have a fair number of subscribers to my feed so I know her pain. I get a few comments but I get more comments in email than on the site. I know a lot has to do with the RSS feed. I accept it.
In other news. I discovered a con to the Kodak Zi8. One of the functions at work that we were looking for was for live streaming. Unfortunately we discovered that contrary to many reports, the Zi8 cannot function as a glorified webcam, even with a tuner card. I’m hoping a firmware update will change this in the future, but that is neither here nor there. So, after spending far too much time researching and testing things at home, I came to a conclusion. Why don’t we just buy a nice HD webcam and use that for the streaming. I don’t mind lending my Zi8 for other uses until we decide to purchase one. I’m a good sharer.
Other fun news. I don’t think I ever mentioned this but my Western Digital HD Media Center rocks. I purchased a Logitech Harmony remote that I found on clearance because I discovered that it worked with the Media Center. It is quite lovely. Josh and I have been watching a lot of movies on it. Definitely worth the $100.
The kitties are all good. Quite adorable as usual. Sawyer is starting to come around. She snuggled with Josh this past weekend which is pretty much unheard of with her. She’s also meowing at me a little more when I am giving her food. This never happened either. It has taken over a year but she is finally starting to get comfortable. Pheew.
Is there a resurgence of romance novels or does that genre always float in the background? I have had people recommend books only to discover they are romance novels. It amuses me every time I go to the used book store and see that the largest group of books are used romance novels. I guess they aren’t books that you want to read multiple times.
In other news, yesterday while testing out the camera in bright light conditions I came across something in the backyard. Two trees from the lot next door fell into our yard. One is a dead pine left over from the hurricanes in 2004. The other must have died in the past year. It was still full of leaves, though dead. They had to have fallen in the past week and a half because that was the last time I was in that part of the yard. Thankfully it isn’t over a large area our yard, but it does make for a lot of cleanup. We had some very nasty storms roll through last week, so it is likely it happened then. I am just glad we haven’t put a fence up. We would have lost it four or five times already.
Today I worked on chopping down some of the invasive air potato plant that infests our yard yearly. When cut, the plant gives off an oil that is an irritant. I chopped down a lot of the plant which resulted in me having a massive itching attack. I ended up having to scrub my arms and neck and take a benadryl. This was a bad move.
I hadn’t eaten anything other than five or six crackers all day. About 30 minutes after taking the Benadryl, I went out. I went to the gas station to fill up the car and then planned to head to my parents. As I was pumping the gas I remembered that Josh wanted to get new tires for my car. I called him and he remembered the tires too. Since I was less than a mile from the house, I just went home. This was a good thing. Within about fifteen minutes I was complaining to Josh about how tired I was. Ten minutes after that I was out. Normally Benadryl doesn’t make me drowsy. In fact, rarely does anything make me drowsy. I think it was the empty stomach that did it.
So that has been my weekend so far. Hope yours was as exciting as mine.
Because we are also planning purchasing the Kodak zi8 for work, I have been spending a little more time working on technical things than a Saturday should allow. Until I am fortunate enough to be given a MAC at work (working on it), editing the .mov files from the Kodak zi8 will require some work. I am limited by what my work PC can do. So, I am attempting to find a work around that will enable me to work on the videos with what software I have available to me or that is free. Since the software that comes with the camera is limited to only using the ArcSoft codecs, I need something else. Basically that means Windows Media Maker. For those video editors out there, I will wait for you to recover. I know, it is rough, but like I said, I’m working on it. If you are looking at a Kodak Zi8 and using a PC, there is hope. Here’s what I have ended up with.
So, we must convert the .mov file to something Windows Media Maker will accept. I was able to find a free piece of software that will convert to an AVI and still allow me to adjust the settings to keep some semblance of quality. What I found was the Pazera Free MOV to AVI Converter. No installation is necessary. Just unzip to a folder and run the movtoavi.exe file.
Within Pazera I changed the profile to the settings below (a sample) and saved them as Kodak zi8.ini for future use. The result was an .avi file that looked good and worked in Windows Media Maker 5.1. You can check the attributes of your file and edit the profile to match them. I hope this helps someone else. I was quite elated to find such a simple solution that still gives me the video quality I desire.
Output File Format: AVI
Video Options: Video codec: WMV version 2 (WMP Bitrate: 8089 kbit/s FPS: 60
OK. I uploaded a video of Hugo towards the end of his playing fetch. This was taken in the living room with only the overhead ceiling fan lights on. The curtains were closed so no natural light came in. Recorded at 720p, 60 fps on a Kodak Zi8 with on board mic. Oh and yes that’s me talking. Surprise!
There was once a time in my life when I spent way too much on shoes. Now, I spend way too much on gadgets. My Zi8 arrived safely today and after letting it charge, I started playing. I’m fairly impressed with it so far. I hooked it up to the television to check the output. I could hear the high pitched noise everyone was talking about. I want to look into it a bit more though. I did a test and reduced the audio gain and there was a bit of a difference. I thought it was only supposed to be for an external microphone, but it still helped a little. I don’t think I will buy an external mic just yet, but it might be something fun for the future. I know we will need one for work, but we should have one I can use.
I purchased a monopod as well. My father-in-law has one for his digital camera and I liked it. I didn’t have image shaking issues when I tested the camera walking around the house, but perhaps I was just rested. I know it will be useful for some occasions, so I went ahead and bought it. I wanted to buy a case but I couldn’t justify spending $15 on something ugly when I know I am capable of making something I’ll actually like.
So onto what I think about this camcorder so far. I like it. In terms of size, it is the same width and height as a Blackberry Bold. It is a little thicker than the bold, but not by too much. It is comfortable to hold in the hands. Once I realized how to work the buttons, it was fairly easy to record without having to look at the buttons. I don’t plan on using it like this very much, but it is nice to know that I won’t have a problem if I need to.
I tried mounting it to a tripod and a monopod with equally good results. The only issue I have right now with the design is the USB connection method. The way it is designed is fine for a laptop, but it didn’t work as a good method when I tried connecting it to a desktop machine. I have a USB extension cable for another device and so I was able to use it. If you are going to be using it on a desktop, I would recommend purchasing one. To Kodak, I would recommend including one in the box. I liked the usb/wall charger system. That is probably because I realized I can plug in the cable for my G1 and charge it through the same charger.
Hopefully tomorrow I will have some video to post on YouTube. My coworkers might have to be my video victims for a while. They’ll forgive me once I make them internet stars.
We are venturing into new worlds at work. Well, I am running head first and dragging work by the heels with me. I have been told on more than one occasion that when I decide to leave, the person that replaces me will hate me because of all of the work I have created. Perhaps I should see if there is a way to make sure that they can only hire a Libra to replace me. I don’t think I have made too much more work for myself. I’ve just changed some of what I do.
After proposing an idea recently I was given the go ahead to purchase the equipment that I need. Me being me, I had to research the hell out of it. I needed to purchase a video camcorder. I wanted something small because we already have a large array of “grown up” cameras for filming and photography. I needed something not quite webcam, but not quite super professional. After a ton of research I decided on five cameras. The first on my list was the Sony Webbie MHS-PM1. It was small, HD and the output was good. Then as I was closing in on my decision, I came across a VERY important fact. The Sony Webbie shuts down after 25 minutes of use. This was a huge flaw. Such a huge flaw that it immediately knocked it off the list. The next on my list was the Kodak Zi8. Early reviews and the videos posted by users look good. In fact they looked so good that I placed an order for one from Kodak on Sunday. I would have done so on Amazon but they were already out of stock.
When I went into work on Monday I mentioned how fast they had sold out. When I went to the Kodak site to begin the process of purchasing one for work I discovered that you could no longer purchase them. This sent me into a bit of a tizzy as to whether my order made the cut. I found it impossible to find out an order status online. The only real way to do it was to get on the phone with Kodak. So after work on Monday I called Kodak and discovered that all was well and that mine had shipped. This morning I also discovered a tracking number in my inbox. I watched the progress and happily relayed the information to Josh that my Zi8 will be delivered tomorrow! So now I just need to buy a memory card and a mono-pod for full useage.
My coworkers have been warned that I will be recording lots of videos on Thursday. Lunchtime will not be safe. I will try to post what I can. Maybe after twelve years of reading my site(s), my web friends will finally hear my voice!
. It was small, HD and the output was good. Then as I was closing in on my decision, I came across a VERY important fact. The 
. Early reviews and the videos posted by users look good. In fact they looked so good that I placed an order for one from Kodak on Sunday. I would have done so on Amazon but they were already out of stock.