Burning in the darkness
Here’s a very excellent video by my buddy Gregg Koskella. This is a link to his original post. Enjoy.
Six Apologies, Lord
Ran across this poem this evening and it really struck a nerve. It’s copied below, but I found it here.
Six Apologies, Lord
Olena Kalytiak DavisI Have Loved My Horrible Self, Lord.
I Rose, Lord, And I Rose, Lord, And I,
Dropt. Your Requirements, Lord. ‘Spite Your Requirements, Lord,
I Have Loved The Low Voltage Of The Moon, Lord,
Until There Was No Moon Intensity Left, Lord, No Moon Intensity Left
For You, Lord. I Have Loved The Frivolous, The Fleeting, The Frightful
Clouds. Lord, I Have Loved Clouds! Do Not Forgive Me, Do Not
Forgive Me LordandLover, HarborandMaster, GuardianandBread, Do Not.
Hold Me, Lord, O, Hold MeAccountable, Lord. I Am
Accountable. Lord.Lord It Over Me,
Lord It Over Me, Lord. Feed MeHope, Lord. Feed Me
Hope, Lord, Or Break My Teeth.Break My Teeth, Sir,
In This My Mouth.
Putting streaming video on a WordPress page
I’ve got to write this down so I don’t forget. I spent a bunch of time trying to decipher how to get streaming video on a webpage. It turned out to be relatively simple, once you know the path to follow. It was just tough finding the path. Here’s an example of what follows. The example you see there shows a mov file on amy.pintglass.org. The trick is that the actual movie that plays is located elsewhere on a streaming server. The mov file that you see on the example page is called a Quicktime Media Link. If you download that mov file, rename it to a txt extension and view it in a text editor, you’ll see where the real file resides.
Here’s how to make it work:
1) Once your video is created, take a screenshot for the “poster”
2) Save the video again (using Quicktime Pro) as a “hinted” video. Be sure to pay attention to the size– 320×240 is perfect for the web.
3) Upload the hinted version to your Quicktime server. This is a special deal–not all servers are set up to stream Quicktime. Make sure yours is (ask your webhost, not me).
4) Make a Quicktime Media Link for the version that is on the server. This means pointing Quicktime at the server and running that file, then exporting it as the Media link (qtl file extension).
5) Upload the qtl file to any server you like, then rename the extension to mov.
6) Use vPIP to get the video on the page. Point to the media link, not the actual video on the streaming server.
Done!
Step four can be circumvented by simply creating a new text file that looks something like this (use angle brackets instead of the square brackets you see here):
[?xml version="1.0"?]
[?quicktime type="application/x-quicktime-media-link"?]
Using Quicktime to make the link is another hoop to jump through, but you actually get a few more options (autoplay, show controls, etc…) that you can mess around with. The code above is the basic thing, though. Just make a text file with that (replacing with your actual server and file, of course) then rename the file to a mov extension.
That was quick!
We decided to sell our 1994 Jeep Cherokee. I cleaned it up today, took some pictures and put it on Craigslist. 3 hours, and 5 inquiries, later it’s gone. That’s easily the speed record for any car I’ve sold. Amazing.
And we sold it none too soon since our water heater exploded last night and we had to get a new one (plus installation). It’s pretty much a wash–the Jeep paid for the water heater. 🙂
Synchronized drinking
Couple of clips
Just a couple of quick video clips that I took yesterday and today with the new little camera. Quality is better than I expected, especially in low light. Just click the image to start the video playing…
Inscrutable
November’s hike: Mt. Mitchell
November’s hike was Mt. Mitchell, near Mt. St. Helens in Washington. Pics are here. The pictures make it look pretty gnarly. It didn’t feel as gnarly as it looks.
I compiled a Google Earth file, but something is amiss with the track and/or geotags. The photos are all on the trail, but they’re in weird spots. Not sure what the problem is, but next hike I’ll run two tracks: one going in and one coming out. That way I should be able to better narrow down any problems.
Anyway, the hike was fun, even though there was significant snow at the summit (around 3 feet in the drifts). We anticipated a wet hike, but the night before we left I checked the weather and it was calling for snow. So I just figured we’d get some flakes at the higher elevations. Apparently it’d been snowing up there for quite some time. The mountain was shrouded in fog at the top, so we couldn’t see the summit from the road to know that there was snow up top. I brought gaiters, but left them in the car–a choice I later regretted, but only marginally. My pant legs were pretty wet near my feet, but my feet stayed warm and dry the whole time. Ron’s feet were soaked by the end–his pants were a little shorter, leaving his socks exposed to the snow.
Saw a TON of elk hunters in the area. Ran into one old dude as we were coming back down the trail, near the bottom. He asked whether we’d seen any elk sign. We hadn’t. We wondered to ourselves, once we were out of earshot, what this 70-year old dude would do if he actually shot an elk. There’s no way he could’ve hauled it out alone. Back down at the trailhead we ran into his hunting partner, who wasn’t actually hunting. I think this partner guy was the muscle if the old guy shot something.
Overall, it was a fun walk in the woods and we snagged three geocaches in the area post-hike. Looking forward to December’s hike!
New camera
New camera came today. It’s tiny–the size of a deck of cards! That’s not what I’m most geeked about, though. It’s waterproof to 10′–I can’t wait to get some cool underwater pictures of the kids swimming!
It’s also going to be nice on the monthly hikes. I was a little worried about taking Amy’s camera out in the woods. I’d be so busted if something happened to that thing. This new camera, in addition to being waterproof, is shockproof for drops up to 5′. That came in handy when it fell off the counter when I unpacked it. 🙂